Asamisimasa/ Øyvind Torvund — Neon Forest Space

This CD of four Torvund compositions comes wrapped in a garish, cardboard, gatefold wallet. The garishness is provided by the pictures on each of the four panels of the wallet: each a brightly coloured cartoon, and each representing one of the tracks. The pieces are performed by Asamisimasa, an ensemble well-versed in avant-garde music, and their main tools, here, include: clarinet, guitar, keyboard, cello, and percussion. However, these are joined by sampler, whistling, electric drill and ‘toy laser gun’ (to mention a few), to give you a sense of the incredibly colourful palette they utilise.

The colourfulness and garishness of the artwork and instrumentation are matched by the recordings themselves. I’ve bashed my head against them for a while, and I’ve come to the conclusion that one of my issues with them, is their framing as ‘composition’. I’ll happily admit that I’m not overly musically educated, and so whilst there is classical music that I enjoy, I enjoy it more as sound than on any structural/compositional level. Essentially, if this was given to me without the word ‘composition’ attached, I think I would hear it in quite a different way. To be fair, it’s unclear precisely how much of the four pieces are strictly laid out by Torvund - some of the sections could well be improvised, but there’s no indication of this in the inlay notes. Anyway, side-stepping that issue, what do we have? All four tracks - I’ll be honest about the fact that they blended into one for me - are characterised by manic, often pointillistic, interplay, to the extent that some passages frankly sound like bad improv. By ‘bad’ I rather mean ‘shallow’: all cheap thrills, trills, and call-and-response tactics. The use of ‘exotic’ instrumentation doesn’t help, in this regard. However, if these sections are indeed composed, then it would be unfair to see them in this negative light. So, for the most part, a definite cartoon-ish atmosphere is successfully evoked. I’m guessing that that will be a popular reaction to the album, but it definitely has a kinetic pace and stop-start directional shifts that remind the ear of cartoon soundtracks. There’s even a tangent into the kind of whimsy/quotation often associated with this area, in Wolf Studies: a short section of campfire guitar and whistling. The overall tone is perhaps more Carl Stalling than Raymond Scott: abstract, stretched, and often spacious. Some of the works are strangely literal. Wolf Studies uses manipulated tapes of recorded wolves, as well  as conjuring lupine howls from the other instruments; whilst Plastic Waves has Torvund mimicking the ebb and flow of ocean waves.

This album is a curious one. I almost feel that I would like to hear the four compositions played by a ‘boring, traditional’ chamber ensemble, to hear them without the distraction of some of the colourful, ‘loaded’ instruments listed above. (Though, obviously, ‘traditional’ classical instruments are just as loaded.) However, the album is as it is, and perhaps the simplest sell I can do is this: imagine that Yamatsuka Eye (of Boredoms, etc.) wrote an album of ‘serious composition’, around the time of Chocolate Synthesizer. I think that gives a reasonable sense of what is to be heard here. Playful, stumbling structures that threaten to fall apart at any second (and do), with ‘cheap’ sounds relished, and the colour saturation turned up to 11 - though with very little true abrasion or skree. I really think a lot of Boredoms fans, and even some Deerhoof fans, would connect with Torvund’s work.