David Toop — Black chamber

On ambient godfather David Toop’s latest album, one piece is inspired by Henri Michaux; this fact sheds light on several aspects of the album as a whole. Michaux was a Walloon writer and painter who was inspired by surrealism and wrote extravagant, mystical imaginary journeys and hermetic poetry, taking drugs as Baudelaire did to reach an artificial paradise. Incidentally, three of his poems were put to music by Witold £utos³awski in the early sixties. On Black chamber Toop, also an accomplished journalist and writer of the key works Ocean of sound and Exotica (and, less to the point here, Rap attack), does not use any specific texts or paintings; rather, he takes the listener on a trip through dense jungles, undiscovered tribes and the bustling streets of a Chinese town.

Toop, who has been working in rock, jazz and experimental contexts from the early 70s, is a traveller, a cosmopolitan, as his books, the influential series of compilations he curated for Virgin and his collaborations with Max Eastley, among other things, have indicated. He has worked with Japanese butoh dancer Mitsutaka Ishii and made field recordings in the Amazone jungle: two things most of us will never do. As to the importance of ‘ambient’ in his later work, it is perhaps significant that he released his first solo LP New and rediscovered musical instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label as far back as 1975. The title of this brand new Sub Rosa album apparently refers to a room (kurodo) where the emperor of Komatsu (on the Japanese Honshu mainland) relived his days as an amateur cook – the name deriving from the smoke-stained walls there.

The overall atmosphere is an intoxicating one. Toop paints a picture that is alternately frightening, awe-inspiring, confusing or just plain lovely. Soft cavities invites us in with some deep ebbing electronic vibrations and shuffling sounds, to which Lol Coxhill (who performed on Siren space, Toop’s composition for tug boats, electronics, text and sax that was performed on the river Thames in 2002) improvises on his soprano sax. Immediately we are dropped in a bewildering ambience, an exotic place where someone may be aiming a toxic dart at us from behind the nearest tree. But the atmosphere needn’t be hostile; the micro-sounds of Waxed skin combined with what may be some very soft, sparse piano notes, are soothing rather than unsettling. Apartment thunder (Eros + sacrifice) seems to dismember an orchestral score and sprinkle it with Japanese vocals and electronic textures. Coxhill reappears on three tracks, sometimes darkly lyrical, sometimes, as on Raw mouth shape, splurting and choking on his sax in a way that would make the Evan Parker school of players proud. My eye strays to the booklet: is that Keith Rowe doing unmentionable things to his guitar?? It is not, but it could have been. Other collaborators include Tom Recchion (organ and tapes) and Yurihito Watanabe (vocals).

It will be obvious that Black chamber is anything but easy listening ambient tapestry for your local elevator. In Toop’s seminal work on ambient the key word is immersion, and this album will teach you its true meaning. A detailed sound collage such as this defies any form of exhaustive reviewing. The ear strains to catch the minutest details of untreated field recordings from China (crows, motorcycles, people talking, a radio playing in a restaurant) or from Toop’s own backyard. In an arcane ritual, some haunting, crackling soundscapes accompany a ceremonial speech and dramatic female singing. A (prepared?) electric guitar on Blind eel priestess, the slowed down voice of sound poet Bob Cobbing (a small in memoriam to a former collaborator and co-member of abAna?), the bamboo reed pipes of Terry Day (of Alterations), solemn drums and sea-breeze guitar twangs, symphonic snippets and a healthy dose of varied electronica, from drony to insect-like… These elements and more combine to form one of the more intriguing collage works in recent memory. It may appear fragmented at first, but give it your undivided attention and it turns into a fascinating trip full of surprises, one you will be tempted to come back to over and over again. Henri Michaux would’ve approved.