Sang (review)

Tim Hodgkinson: Sang. Compact disc ReR TH2, 1999; available from ReR Megacorp, 79 Beulah Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey CR7 8JG, UK; fax +44 (0) 181-771-3138; electronic mail megacorp@dial.plpex.com; World Wide Web www.megacorp.u-net.com.

The self-taught British composer/multi-instrumentalist Tim Hodgkinson is probably best known for his work with the avant-garde band, Henry Cow, co-founded in the late 1960s by Lindsay Cooper, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, John Greaves, and Mr. Hodgkinson. This band was at the forefront of the Marxist-inspired Rock in Opposition (RIO) movement, founded on the premise that small groups of unconventional rock or jazz musicians could come together to create supportive performance and distribution networks in opposition to commercial culture (Cutler, C. 1985/1993. File Under Popular: Theoretical and Critical Writings on Music. New York: Automedia).

Although the RIO movement ceased to exist some time ago, the grassroots, do-it-yourself, uncompromising spirit that fueled it lives on in Mr. Hodgkinson's new compact disc entitled Sang, featuring four difficult-to-classify compositions. As stated in the liner notes, most of the instruments heard, both "real and virtual," are played by Mr. Hodgkinson himself. Each piece involves both acoustic and electroacoustic instruments and conventions, but in different forms. The first, The Road to Erzin, is written for a mixed quintet and live electronic processing. GUSHe is for B-b clarinet and tape. The Crackle of Forests involves a large number of real and virtual solo instruments. And M'A is for tape alone.

The Road to Erzin was inspired by music the composer encountered during his travels in central Asia. One hears frenetic ponticello bowing and high harmonics against a discontinuous layer featuring loud percussion, piano, electronic keyboard attacks, and abrasive saxophone multiphonics. Behind this there is a subdued piano part bathed in reverberation. The composition proceeds by way of distinct, rhythmically complex, textural foils. Later in the piece there are thick, layered percussion barrages reminiscent of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. On several occasions the musical flow stops abruptly in an almost sloppy manner, leaving one to wonder about the intentionality of such moments. The ending, for example, sounds like a tag, or afterthought, rather than as a consequence of the preceding material, strangely inconsequential in comparison with the largely dynamic force of the rest of this composition.

In GUSHe, Mr. Hodgkinson works with difference tones, the result of some very loud, high-register string and synthesizer sounds. These are set against clarinet glissandi and quarter-tones referencing a style not uncommon in Eastern Europe or parts of the Middle East. A gushe is a kind of Iranian mode containing a set of pitches with associated instrumental techniques. The composer extends this idea to include multiple modes and gestural links between the live clarinet and recorded guitar parts. For example, a guitar tremolo is paired with an amplitude-modulated, flutter-tongue clarinet sound. Some of the taped sonorities are processed in such a way as to conjure up images of analog modular synthesizers. The extreme improvisatory expression in this piece comes close to the work of the iconoclastic German composer, Hans Joachim Hespos. The compositional aspects might be compared with Henry Cow compatriot Fred Frith, except that GUSHe covers a wider berth without falling back on explicitly repetitive grooves.

The 23-minute algorithmic nihilism of The Crackle of Forests presents relentless hocketing marked by occasional changes in speed and the addition of sustained tones. One is not surprised to learn, in the liner notes, that this piece owes something to the filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky and is Mr. Hodgkinson's response to "signal events" such as the new millennium. The composer states that "all impressions are formed from multitudes, from the regularities of ceaseless flux in fields of minute elements. A change of light or pressure, and the flow takes another form: this is the moment at which the absolutely ordinary gives birth to the extraordinary." This is an expansive idea but, unfortunately, the piece suffers from some all...