Annie Gosfield — Lost Signals And Drifting Satellites
Her last release Flying sparks and heavy machinery contained a forty-five minute industrial symphony created using recorded sounds from German factories and her own unique style with the sampler. However on this her third Cd for Tzadik we find Annie in a more sedate but no less forward looking or conventional mood. Gone are the explosive machine noise crescendos and factory rhythms, and in their place minimal and direct instrumentation from the Flux Quartet, Joan Jeanrenaud and George Kentros. The first piece Lightheaded and Heavyhearted is played by the Flux Quartet. A spiky, spidery work that displays both the quartets virtuosity and Gosfields ability to score delicate quasi-ambient textures against sharper more feral string work.
The title track is a delight. A brilliantly atmospheric and refined duet between the violin of Kentros and the electronics of Gosfield. The violin weaves meandering lines of colour around shortwave static and light machine sounds to great effect. I have a vision of a lone violin in a vast empty field trying to communicate with alien vessels circling above. As the satellite sounds become tort and frayed so to does the violin stretch for sharper and more dissonant timbres, a musical argument across time.
The third piece Mentryville is a solo prepared piano work played by Gosfield herself. I have loved the prepared piano as an instrument ever since hearing John Cages Sonatas and interludes. Here Gosfield takes Cages concept of the miniature percussion orchestra and brings forth a powerful landscape of hulking machinery stalking a ghost town long abandoned by human beings. More abstract passages are followed by rhythmic sections seemingly trying to mimic the relentless sounds of the factory environment.
The final piece The harmony of the body machine is a more oppressive and dissonant piece than the others on offer here. Which is strange considering it’s title. The lonely sounding cello of Joan Jeanrenaud seems to be competing with the forceful industrial sounds for breathing space. Only on a few occasions does the rhythmic pulse and throb of the machine seem in harmony with the plucking and bowing of the cello. Perhaps the title is ironic, much of Gosfields work seems designed to demonstrate the disharmony between man and machine, where before this was produced by monolithic montages of machine and electronic noise, on this record Annie Gosfield puts us one to one with the machine, and the results are just a beguiling.