Antoine Chessex( played by Apartment Hou — Untitled

Here’s an album consisting of two long tracks, both recorded live at Cafe OTO in London, one in 2014 and the other in 2015. Both are ensemble works, though the line-up differs greatly between the two pieces, and the ensemble is named Apartment House for each. Noetinger appears playing reel to reel tape recorders, and Chessex’s role here is the composer of both works. The CD comes in a cardboard, gatefold wallet, with quite stunning black and white artwork. I think it depicts massed bamboo stalks, cut and leaning in different directions - my words here really don’t do justice to the beauty of the images!

The first piece, Plastic Concrete (2014), features very mixed instrumentation: violin, clarinet, two trombones, cello, double bass, electric guitar, and reel to reel/electronics. It’s a piece that slowly unfurls, initially, but proceeds to establish a changing path between three different territories: drones, more abstracted sections, and louder interruptions. The two trombones often create pivotal moments, with a reasonable amount of blare and blat. They often team up in short, unison calls - truly funereal at points. In and around these, there are passages of squeaking clarinet, and spidery violin, whilst the electric guitar often manifests itself as small, distorted (but not remotely overpowering) clouds of chords. The drones are often uneasy, founded on wavering strings, whilst other sections see the stringed instruments producing more pointillistic sounds. Throughout all of this, Noetinger’s tape work often operates as odd colouring - sometimes as the proverbial icing on the cake. Alongside more subtle reverb and echo treatments of the ensemble, there are also all manner of interjections and swirls, accelerating and decelerating. Sometimes, the reel to reel acts as an odd breaking of the surface - like the breaking of the fourth wall; you realise that you are listening to a recording within a recording, and sometimes it’s almost as if Noetinger is tampering with the live recording itself.

The second work, Accumulation (2015), features a much more stripped back Apartment House, now reduced to two violins, viola, and cello. Again, these instruments interact, and are processed by, the reel to reel recorders. After a bare, persistent opening passage - with short, solo, string notes interrupted and complimented by other string interventions (as well as chameleon-like tape) - the piece becomes a tangle of drones and string exploration. The drones run the gamut from incredibly quiet, textural sections, to more strident, swirling, queasy passages. There are dense tangles later on in the piece, where it really becomes unclear what is acoustic, and what is acousmatic… The laziest bird’s eye view of Accumulation (2015) - in the most basic of layman’s terms - is that it’s akin to a ‘standard’ classical piece being broken into a million shards, and then mixed and scattered, with tape sounds ghosting in and out. Sometimes, the tape blends into the general sound, other times it rudely cuts in - sometimes using feedback techniques. Near the end, the tapes take over, and I think all of the sounds we hear are in fact recordings of the string ‘quartet’, mangled by Noetinger…

These are a couple of nicely complimentary pieces - both similar enough and dissimilar enough to spark off each other, but still present unified ideas. The reel to reels are sometimes rather attention grabbing - though this might just be my ears/preferences - but most of the time, the recordings really are fine ensemble performances. Though I should say, that Chessex’s compositions remain a mystery to me: I genuinely couldn’t chance a guess at the degree of composition, improvisation, or process that is at play here. However, for those who have an interest in ‘darker’ improv/composition, and those with an interest in reel to reel performance, this is a good bet.