One of these days the world of improvised and experimental music may agree on a taxonomy that can help us identify "styles" within this massive basket of a genre. Saying you like improvised music can be almost like saying you like comedy, where trading lists of favorites and inviting acquaintances to performances may also more likely than not lead to awkward silences. Some progress has been made, such as using the term "laminar improvisation" to evoke the approach of groups like AMM. Even that term, however, obviously fails to capture the extreme variety of "laminar" approaches to improvisation.
This can be a frustrating state of affairs both for listeners and reviewers. This is especially true when, as with Watt's "Alter Egos" for this reviewer, a disk features a familiar style of improvisation that one particularly enjoys, yet it can take so much work to find a way to convey in words what that music is like. The worst case is when reviewers start going poetic and whipping out the thesaurus to try to compensate. In the face of all this, though, let's take a shot at trying to say what's happening on this CD.
First off, some background on this group. Watt comprises Ian Smith on trumpet, Hannah Marshall on cello, and Stephen Finn on percussion. According to various internet sources (there are no liner notes) the three have individually played with a huge roster of European improvisers over the years, especially those in the U.K.
Now, back to the question of how they sound. One approach that can help is comparison to previous groupings. Perhaps expected of a group with London roots, this trio brought to mind some earlier Incus CDs. The interplay in particular reminded me of "Original Gravity," by Tony Bevan, Greg Kingston, and Matt Lewis. The players are clearly comfortable enough in their own musical skins to convey an individual and group spirit simultaneously. Where less experienced improvisers rely on crutches like imitating each others' sounds, trying to match registers, etc., Watt manages to create a more natural, organic cohesiveness. Each player is able to explore separate areas and sounds unique to his/her instrument, yet not lose sight of what the others are up to. The track "End of day" serves as example of this element, with its almost seamless and breath-like progression of events.
Speed of exchanges is another area that should be nailed down in a taxonomy of improvisation. Is it the lightning interplay of Parker/Guy/Lytton, the glacial, hesitant development of a lowercase ensemble, or something in between? In the case of Watt, the term "mid-tempo conversational" seems to fit. Cuts like "Hawks," "Every instant" and "Strand" represent this comfortable loping that Watt seems to enjoy inhabiting.
Another key dimension for improv groups is probably the degree that the instruments played are recognizable. Players that use a lot of extended technique tend to emphasize the unvoiced noisy elements of the instrument. Borrowing a term from phonetics, we could therefore talk about how "fricative" the music is. I'd say Watt is "medium-high fricative." Ian Smith's trumpet work, especially on "Old Suit," brought to mind a slightly more restrained version of Toshinori Kondo. Hannah Marshall's approach to cello shares the skittering deftness of players like Fred Lonberg-Holm. Meanwhile, Stephen Flinn's bag-of-tricks approach to percussion often eschews traditional drum sounds and invites guesswork about the sources of sounds.
So, "Alter Egos" fits nicely within the genre of European free improvisation, once you narrow down the specifics a bit. There are no big surprises but, to paraphrase Derek Bailey, this is the kind of stuff I like to hear on a night out.
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