Sounds of the future and echoes of Evan Parker’s creative past commingle in this extraordinary live recording that blurs the boundaries between free improvisation, contemporary composition and electronic music. “Memory/Vision” is the third album in the critically-acclaimed series that began with “Toward The Margins” and continued with “Drawn Inward”. Stunning playing and/or sound treatments by all members of this English/Italian/American/Spanish edition of the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble.
Memory / Vision
Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble
- Memory / Vision
- 1Part 110:24
- 2Part 211:18
- 3Part 305:09
- 4Part 413:21
- 5Part 512:43
- 6Part 609:10
- 7Part 708:29
Jazzmagazine, Disque d'émoi
The latest manifestation of UK saxophonist Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic project is the most ambitious yet, including four electronics / computer specialists in addition to the core quintet of improvisers. It’s a departure for Parker – an extended piece of composition deploying some comparatively orthodox narrative notions about highs and lows, episodes of dramatic intensity and quiet reflection.
John Fordham, The Guardian
Eine eher zarte improvisatorische Reise durch Welten elektronischer Klänge und elektroakustisch veränderter Instrumente. Evan Parker nimmt dabei keinerlei Rücksicht auf Topoi aus dem Jazzbereich oder aus der Avantgarde-Elektronik. Gerade das macht die Abstimmung der Klangereignisse so ungemein aufregend und inspiriert.
Reinhard Schulz, Neue Musikzeitung
ECM (and in particular producer Steve Lake) are to be congratulated for their commitment to British free improv. … Their usual high standards of recording and presentation gives the music a high profile it doesn’t normally get, and this album is no exception. Evan Parker’s EAE are the result of the saxophonist’s long held interest in electro-acoustic processing. Alongside Parker’s usual trio (augmented with piano and violin), there are no less than four people engaged in capturing and treating the realtime playing with all manner of digital trickery. Parker avoids the unholy mess this could have become by structuring Memory/Vision as a series of solos and small scale groupings. The acoustic instruments are ghosted into new shapes by filtering, looping and pitchshifting. Barry Guy’s bass plucks bounce back as tiny high register blips; Philipp Wachsmann’s violin is looped into long melodic curls, while Evan’s soprano flutterings peel off into wisps of sour melody. … The results range from cool, pastoral ambience to episodes of slightly mournful abstract twittering. This is music that hangs in the air, sometimes vaporous, sometimes almost sculptural in its weight. Parker’s structures make this a rewarding (and repeatable) experience, and the spacious, pristine production gives each sound room to breathe. Luscious, alien stuff, and utterly beautiful.
Peter Marsh, BBCi
Wie schon Drawn Inward fordert auch diese live in Oslo eingespielte, exzellent von Steve Lake produzierte CD hochkonzentrierte Hörer. Die Erweiterung des Electro-Acoustic Ensemble auf neun Akteure hat nochmals die Komplexität erhöht. Vier Elektroniker manipulieren den Input von Parker, Philipp Wachsmann, Barry Guy, Agustí Fernandez und Paul Lytton, was zu spannender, intensiver Interaktion führt.
Sven Thielmann, Stereoplay
Die Zusammenarbeit italienischer Computerfreaks und britischer Schaber und Kratzer, ihre Erforschung der Bezüge zwischen elektronisch bearbeitetem Material und Naturklang gehörte von Anfang an zum sowohl ästhetisch avanciertesten wie intellektuell anregendsten, was die europäische Improvisationsmusik in ihrer genretypischen Avantgarde-Erstarrung in den letzten zehn Jahren hervor gebracht hat: Nun, mit Memory/Vision, ist wohl endgültig die Zeit der Reife angebrochen. Mit Evan Parker türmen Barry Guy, Phil Wachsmann, Lawrence Casserley die immer alten Töne, doch ständig neue Musik zu filigranen Klangwogen, ein Tsunami in slow motion.
Karl Bruckmaier, Süddeutsche Zeitung
With Memory/Vision, the Electro-Acoustic ensemble has expanded to the point where its musical textures have acquired an orchestral quality. They still shimmer with a ghostly light but now they seem wider and even more spatial. But it’s also a record of large and small group performances, of dyads and triads and of individual voices that emerge from its foggy, other-worldly soundscape. The amount of information contained here is astonishing. There are snippets of older performances in there to trouble the powers of recall. And there are new sounds and combinations of sound that are so transformed their original source is lost forever. … It’s a record to play on headphones to grasp its full range of tones and colours and the remarkable individual performances that shape this music.
At times icily severe. At others warm, glowing and comforting. This is a remarkable piece of modern music-making and a reminder that nu-jazz owes a profound debt to those like Parker, Wachsmann, Guy and Lytton.
Duncan Heining, Jazzwise
