Arturas Bumsteinas — Epiloghi
The first 38 minutes of this lengthy album are the 6 movements of the title piece, "Epiloghi". Each of the tracks is supposed to reflect one of the 'basic human affects', in an ancient Greek theatrical sort of sense, but honestly the album blurs together as it plays. The songs feels similar in emotion, instrumentation and pattern of movement. I find the concept Bumsteinas has attempted to be a fool's undertaking; can you improvise upon a concept as vague, as thoroughly and constantly explored and discussed as "love" or "sadness", and get something meaningful? The music on this album would suggest you cannot.
The sound ebbs and flows in blob-like forms, the denser moments building into drone-like chords with layers of quavering female voice singing 'ooh'. The album is a collage-like flotsam of sound, where few decisive gestures or distinct moments of drastic change have been inserted. Almost constantly present is the harpsichord hammering away in major key intervals to some inner pulse, with seeming disregard for the general arrhythmic nature of the rest of the music.
The giddy 'plink' of the harpsichord becomes actively irritating on the 5th piece "Joy", when it begins to play a maddening circus tune at rapid speed. It does not seem there was any irony to this. It seems Bumsteinas has attempted to achieve musical 'Joy' by carelessly inserting musical patterns from upbeat styles which are commonly thought to be 'joyful', i.e. gospel or circus music, at random into his otherwise much sparser piece. It's all very scatterbrained and directionless to my ears, and the stuffy liner notes only re-inforce to me the feeling of pointlessness.
Every time I have attempted to listen to this album, I've found myself mentally disengaged, and slightly irritated by its non-specific perky shallowness. The harpsichord is well recorded enough, but none of the drone-like qualities are consistent or decisive enough to render the music successfully ambient, and for most the recording we simply meander, no significant shapes emerging or tides of momentum expressing themselves.
It was several tries before I actually reached the album's final track, a massive 32 minute piece called "Night on the Sailship", which sounds nothing like the first 6 tracks. Here, the blaring and tasteless harpsichord is absent, and the only sounds are a pleasantly subtle acoustic environment constructed from close mic'd objects in the studio, designed to sound like field recordings of the deck of a boat. On headphones, the effect is magical and transporting. As I listen, I'm aware that I'm listening to an artificial constructed spacial environment, but this only helps to enhance the fantastic, surreal feeling of the track. A rainstick, for example, is used to simulate the periodic slosh to and fro. A cannon battle is impressively simulated near the end, with some great thunderous footsteps and sounds of smashing wood, sounding bassy, powerful and real. I love stuff like this, and if the first half of the album had as many delicate, precisely arranged textures like these, I'd likely give "Epiloghi" a perfect rating.
In the end, I'm quite conflicted about this album. The first half, the 6 movements of "Epiloghi", seem like an unfocused waste of time and attention, representing everything I detest about stuffy, overthought avant garde. However, I'm inclined to recommend this album to some listeners anyway, as the 32 minute "Night on the Sailship" is essential for people interested in experimental percussion work, theater sound design and foley, or fans of virtuosic field recordists like Chris Watson and Lasse Marc-Riek (whose album "Harbor" is not dissimilar in feel to "Night on the Sailship"). In conclusion, "Epiloghi" has some value, but also a great deal of pretense.