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(Click for large picture) The Choir Boys with Strings Visit
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Stinson, Pask, Kaiser, Liebig 1. Needlework Alice 11:59 The music was created in two continuous suites. All music © 2006, Jeff Kaiser Music, ASCAP and Kaleidacousticon,
ASCAP Special thanks to Robert Lawson and Ollie Powers for the invitation
to perform,
Originally with silly string....
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Trumpeter JEFF KAISER and clarinetist/saxophonist ANDREW PASK perform together as “The Choir Boys”; on their latest album, they’ve teamed up with guitarist G.E. STINSON and bass guitarist STEUART LIEBIG for THE CHOIR BOYS WITH STRINGS (pfMentum PFMCD037). Kaiser has a lively approach that makes equal use of acoustic and electronic effects – he’s one of the few players I’ve heard lately to make genuinely creative use of echo – and Pask gives the music plenty of bite with his distracted, angry-hornet alto and clarinet playing, reminiscent at times of Anthony Braxton. The guitarists are stranger and more elusive presences, whose activities are often responsible for shifts in the entire sonic environment: soundscapy bits where jazz horns stand out against abstract electronic backdrops, noisy four-way blitzes, passages of electroacoustic austerity, awesome pile-ups of distortion and reverberation, intricate on-the-hoof fugues created by means of loops and echo. Indeed, it’s the way that the disc steers a path between various genres of improvisation that’s particularly impressive: at one point, for instance, the electronics give way for a lovely passage of straight-up acoustic improv on “Frenchwoman Luggage Cart,” and there’s a nice, squelchy groove that comes into play on “Definitely Jack.” Excellent stuff all round, the quartet sustaining nearly 80 minutes of improvisation at a consistently high level of invention. Nate Dorward, Cadence, August 2006 Recorded live in two large suites at Ventura College Theatre by the quartet of Andrew Pask clarinet, bass clarinet, alto and bass penny whistle, Jeff Kaiser on trumpet and a version of Don Ellis's quarter tone instrument and GE Stinson and Steuart Liebig on guitar and bass guitar respectively, The Choir Boys With Strings serves to show how slow someone like Anthony Braxton has been to wake up to the potential of electronics in improvised music. One can imagine someone like George Lewis taking part in something like this, though the language is closer to the saxophonist's. Everyone's plugged into something and the result is an urgent, witty and often moving collage of acoustic and electronic sound which doesn't draw attention to itself, but lets some genuinely powerful music come through. -Brian Morton, The Wire May 2006. Electronics spin the ruptured progressions of Kaiser's trumpet into so many kaleidoscopic variations, thickening the texture of the music and constructing a bevy of relationships, each fraught with significance...highly cerebral electronics perform an act of cannibalism on the other instruments, blurring the crests and tropes of the compositions and emitting a pastiche of wailing horns and low synthetic hum that is uncanny...It is an onslaught that, though unnerving, does not destroy, but rather tests and strengthens the conceptual apparatus through which one engages with such music in the first place. Max Schaefer, Signal To Noise, Summer 2006 CHOIR BOYS WITH STRINGS [JEFF KAISER/ANDREW PASK/STEUART LIEBIG/G.E. STINSON] (pfMENTUM 037; USA) This is quite far from what most folks would expect from a quartet of trumpet, clarinet, bass guitar, and electric guitar, but it won't be a surprise to anyone familiar with Kaiser and Pask's previous duo work under the Choir Boys moniker. This is an electronic processing blowout, all four players largely masking the conventional sounds of their instrument with outer space swooshes and asteroid streaks. Kaiser (trumpet, quarter-tone trumpet, flugelhorn, electronics) and Pask (clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, bass penny whistle, electronics) are damn fine players, so my favorite parts come when the organic feeling of their horns finds a balance with the electronics. The playing is thoughtful, varied, and controlled, but it's a far cry from the kind of restrained improv that's common these days. These cats let loose with a rambunctious and gleeful spirit that reminds me of Sun Ra going into his most cosmic zone. Liebig and Stinson are hardcore veterans of the kind of multi-layered textural guitar extensions they focus on here, to the point where I'd strongly recommend this disc to fans of the general space/ambient genre who might have a hankering for some serious turbulence as they drift away. - Michael Anton Parker, Downtown Music Gallery, NYC, NY No, actually, no pure voiced choir boys or lush orchestrations turn up here. Hunt if you must and try and uncover them. At the opening pitches, your ear is plunged into an electronic search for signal playing tag with acoustic contributions from the clarinet. Sometimes the sonic clouds clear and off in the distance you see it, yes it, over there, but the fog rolls in before you can possibly get there. The lines are crossed, the vision blurred, the dream continues. But wait, over there, there it is. No, wrong again. Here is half of a cell phone call to Saturn relayed through an outdated videogame unit. Is he frustrated? Damn straight he is and he wants to go home. Please come and pick him up. He'll be waiting, waiting over there, next to it. You know. And hurry if you can. — MS, www.newmusicbox.org/earmark_archives.nmbx The Choir Boys - The Choir Boys With
Strings (CD, pfMENTUM, Experimental/modern classical/jazz/electronic) March 2006, www.babysue.com/ Album enregistré plus tôt
par le trompettiste Jeff Kaiser et le clarinettiste et saxophoniste Andrew
Pask, The Choir Boys est récemment devenu quartette. Avec le soutien
des guitaristes G.E. Stinson et Steuart Liebig, la paire d’origine
renouvelle en public ses expériences électro-acoustiques.
Chacun des quatre membres faisant généralement usage d’apports électroniques
variés. Autres Chroniques de Grisli, www.infratunes.com/ In following their duo session, The
Choir Boys, with this quartet performance a year later, Jeff Kaiser and
Andrew Pask once again reach out into the realm of electronic music,
unfettered by convention. The Choir Boys with Strings adds guitar and
bass to the mix, giving Kaiser’s trumpets and Pask’s woodwinds
an added layer of sounds. They’re wild and raucous throughout,
making sure that eerie refrains capture the day. Jim Santella, AllAboutJazz.com Jeff Kaiser abbandona per un attimo il
suo Ockodektet ed in compagnia del neozelandese Andrew Pask ci sforna
un dischetto agile/pesante di notevole spessore. In sintesi siamo di
fronte ad un oscuro viaggio misticheggiante fra schizzi jazz, paturnie
improvvisative più accese, deviazioni inqualificabili e un'elettronica
stiracchiata verso il basso che sfiora spesso derive dark ambient (sto
usando questo termine per la seconda volta in breve tempo ed in recensioni
di materiali del genere.Che vuol dire?). Stupiscono di molto gli attacchi
brutisti di Dim Effigies dove oggettivamente ci si trova di fronte ad
una furia iconoclasta raramente data a vedere dai due strumentisti, assalti
in quasi distorsione, cupe brutalità elettroniche di qualche lontana
matrice industrial ed un belante motivo impro per fiati che malevolo
si leva in alto. Confonde non poco le idee, e questo è un buon
segno (1). Marco Carcasi, www.kathodik.it/ |
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