http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/001572.html
Text of Light - Rotterdam.1
Room40
EDRM410
Text of Light takes their name from Stan Brakhage’s 1974 film of the same name (which I’ve not seen), involving time-lapse photography shot through prisms and a glass ashtray. Their modus operandi is to perform with various works of experimental cinema, improvising to the images. On this occasion, recorded in Rotterdam on January 28, 2005, the personnel was Alan Licht (guitar), Lee Ranaldo (guitar/electronics), Ulrich Krieger (saxophone and, erm, “sax-tronics”), DJ Olive (turntables, powerbook) and Tim Barnes (drums, percussion, electronics). The film to which they were improvising isn’t mentioned but if the still that serves as the disc’s cover image derived from it, perhaps someone can perform the identification.
Strictly based on what’s presented here, the brief (sub-20 minutes) performance traces the common arc from soft to loud and back again. It somewhat straddles the field between a typical eai set and a standard free jazz one. William Hooker is often the drummer with this band and one can easily imagine the direction this outing may have taken with him in tow rather than Barnes but even so, the latter’s drumming is more “traditional” here than the work by which he’s most familiar to eai fans. As there’s not so much in terms of structure with which to engage, what pleasures there are to derive tend to come from the layers of sound details that, when things reach full steam, are fairly rich. The presence of Krieger’s screaming sax (sometimes recalling Zorn) often pushes things further into an “ecstatic jazz” direction than I enjoy although fans of that area looking for access into noisier, less idiomatic music might be well served. It’s impossible to say, of course, exactly how the music would have worked in its proper context but, solely as an audio cd, I found it a bit heavy on the blowout and light on inspiration.
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