Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Monday, January 24, 2005

Icebreaker: Cranial Pavement

Icebreaker
Cantaloupe

Icebreaker—an ensemble comprised of guitars, panpipes, saxophones, electric cello and other instruments not traditionally found in a symphony orchestra—remains one of the UK’s most adventuresome new music groups. Founded by James Poke and John Godfrey in 1989 to play at the new Dutch music festival in York, Icebreaker has built a legion of fans by playing music that combines contemporary classical, rock and alternative music into a high-octane Molotov cocktail.

Icebreaker’s new studio recording—“Cranial Pavement”—is deeply influenced by the rhythmic innovations of Colin Nancarrow and the CD opens with Poke’s brief arrangement of Nancarrow’s Study for Player Piano #2b which is followed instantly by a deafening open crescendo of John Godfrey’s “Gallows Hill” which uses long Hendrik-like guitars reverbs and percussion that evokes a slow march to a bad end to create a gathering sense of menace. Greek composer Yannis Kyriakides’ Blindspot is a jazzy, engaging melange of overlapping rhythms driven by a funky electric bass. Scottish flutist and composer Richard Craig’s Chook consists of four shortish pieces that engagingly join passages of racous humor and whimsy with moments of sheer beauty, especially those interludes where the flute is dominant.

Michael Gordon/Icebreaker: Trance
Icebreaker
Cantaloupe

Michael Gordon composed Trance for Icebreaker in the early 1990s and a recording of the 52-minute piece was released on the now defunct Argo label in 1996. This is a new recording of the original version from Cantaloupe, Bang on a Can’s own label, but it is not simply a re-issue of the old recording. Gordon has remixed the piece, adding extra layers of keyboard and electric guitar parts with the result that a piece that was already boisterous and in-your-face is now even more of a lease-breaker. Put this one on, set the repeat button, and go away for the weekend. When you get back your furniture will be on the sidewalk.

Gordon has always been more let it bleed than let it be and among the three founders of Bang on a Can (with David Lang and Julia Wolfe), he is the one whose music is always closest to the spirit of the adventuresome collective’s name. Trance is Gordon at his rawest and most difficult but it is also, in my view, a major work of contemporary music, mingling the spirit of the modern underground dance and rave scenes with the voices of ancient shamen and echoes of Stravinsky. It is hard for conventionalists to listen to but impossible to ignore. Fifty years from now, “classical” music fans will listen to this and say, wow, this cat was ahead of his time.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:02 AM