What do you get when you feature five of the most accomplished contemporary performer-improvisers on a single album of original music? With A Fine Chance for Permanence, Drew Wesely (bowed/prepared guitar), Laura Cocks (flute), Camilo Ángeles (flute), Lester St. Louis (cello), and Carlo Costa (percussion) have created a synthesis of visionary voices and an emblem of a communal musical language. Released Jun. 5 on Dinzu Artifacts, the equal parts challenging and enthralling album rewards listeners who approach with an open ear.
Clocking in at nearly ten minutes, the opening track, “A,” is the longest on the album, but also one of the most spacious. Gently undulating flute long tones intermingle with bowed percussion and ghostly pizzicato harmonics, creating a calmly morphing music like pleasant scents stirred by a breeze. The sense of pulse is expanded to the point of obscurity, and in the heart of the track, the sounds become so small and textural they induce a brain-tingling ASMR stupor.
With free improvisation, truly anything is possible. When executed poorly, the result lacks meaning and direction. But here, the textures, timbres, gestures, motives, and energy of each track are not randomly or carelessly chosen; they are intentionally generated from finely-tuned modes of listening, thinking, and responding — usually with a great deal of immediacy and urgency.
On “Chance,” the ensemble summons a cacophony of sound: the flutes chatter with the incessant ditties of an at-capacity aviary, set against a rhythm and bass section that is as energizing as it is disjointed. And yet, a holistic sense of cohesion unites the onslaught of short gestures that dance across the frequency spectrum. It’s as if one ventured out with a field recorder to capture the sounds of a strange ecosystem, then played the recordings back in double-time.
For those who are new to music that so strongly defies conventional approaches to time, pitch, and form, it might seem difficult to find an entry point at first. However, to even the greenest listeners, there is a lot to appreciate and experience here simply by focusing on the raw qualities of sound. How are elements such as density conveyed? Does your sense of time seem to speed up or slow down, perhaps even to nearly a standstill? How does the ensemble play off of one another through imitation, disruption, and synthesis?
For example, while the temporal experience of “for” remains relatively consistent, instrumental timbres shift greatly from section to section. The track begins with breathier, grainier, sounds drawn from feathered flutes and bristling bow hairs, and later dives into a more deeply resonant sound world of murky cello tones and darkly resonant percussion. By the end of the track, the composite timbre shifts again as a rattling graininess returns, this time retaining the shadowy lower frequencies gleaned from the middle section.
As seasoned and celebrated performers in their own domains, each artist offers an array of techniques and stylistic trappings that speak to their vast and unique experiences. But what ultimately makes A Fine Chance for Performance work so well is their collective vision for the language and syntax of the ensemble. In many ways, the album is something of an artifact: a snapshot of a fleeting moment in the studio, a singular relic from the meeting of these minds. It’s an attempt to capture and preserve a shared language of spontaneous creation; it’s a manifesto that documents a dynamic sonic identity.
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