Today we have a track sampling solely the dirty business of its collaborators, Javanese gamelan, and some heavy rock, alright?

Today we have a track sampling solely the dirty business of its collaborators, Javanese gamelan, and some heavy rock, alright?

A collaboration between Bill Wells and Tori Kudo’s Maher Shalal Hash Baz embodies a distinct sense of imtimacy. This year we observe the release of GOK, a re-recording of 2006’s Osaka Bridges, and that intimacy is immediately apparent as an out of tune euphonium, propped up by a barely-there piano timidly tread through the opening phrases.

You see, none of the session musicians are particularly adept at the use of their instruments, and that’s exactly where they draw so much of this intimacy from. It’s immediately obvious that everyone is huddled together in a single room, trying their best to make it through the pieces. Much like the space between notes, it’s easy to neglect those poor little sour ones, when they add so much colour and character to the timbre of Wells’ delicately crafted tunes.

There isn’t a track that overstays its welcome on GOK. Wells’ arrangements are simple, and beautiful, allowing for something so delicate as the horn player’s breath and fingers on the keys are able to carry through. Much in the same way, Reiko Kudo’s vocal appearances delicately falter through the doot-doo chanting, always perfectly balanced against the instruments, never in danger of overpowering them. In this way, we’re able to share in the naivety of their performance.

This music isn’t wickedly technical, nor soulful, energetic, nor danceable. It’s wistful and meandering and evocative of a cool autumn day. Bossa grooves, Brian Wilson inspired pop hooks, brassy calypso, and Ellington’s moodiness are cohesively distilled into the brilliant and charmingly humanist work of Bill Wells and Maher Shalal Hash Baz.

Squigglevision, for those who don’t know, was the animation technique used to produce “Dr Katz: Professional Therapist”. To call it animation is a bit of a stretch to some, as the show is comprised basically of a series of stills with voiceover. What made this so much better than The Reading Rainbow, was that the linework rendering the stills would undulate to create this sense of motion, even though you’re staring at two people sitting perfectly still. Steve Reich’s notion of pulsation is as best I can imagine the musical analogue of this technique.

The Desert Music was released in 1985 on Nonesuch Records and consists of five movements spanning about fifty minutes. Reich’s desert is meant to be evoke imagery of both Sinai from his Jewish heritage, and also the desert of the New Testament where Jesus must confront temptation. Much like the desert, Reichs composition seems to sprawl endlessly in every direction. You’re constantly in the presence of the pulse.

A constant flurry of eighth notes, Reich’s Pulse, passes off from part to part to generate that squiggly sense of movement. But minimalism doesn’t mean furniture music. Much like with Dr Katz, the buzz is meant to keep you engaged, not to let you space out. The text selected for the second movement reads, “It is not a flue note either, it is the relation of a flute note to a drum. I am wide awake. The mind is listening.”

But, The Desert Music isn’t just some ambient happenstance. There is brilliant, attentive structure to the way in which the same phrase can layer and cascade across the principal strings. It requires that the listener be an active participant in its consumption, so that then when the chorus enters, we see fragments of sustained chords and ideas, which reflects in the fragmented delivery of the text by the chorus.

Persistently, even through the slower points of the third movement, the music always returns to the active movement of pulsation. It exists to drive our attention, across the wonderful relations among strings and percussion.