Your local
big art museum, which if it isn't attached to the Dream Whip theory of art
some museums essay (in which Dali daymares stand cheek-by-jowl with Grandma
Moses rural miniatures and other imponderables far less ponderable), most
probably has an American Wing. That's where they put the Basquiats, the
Koonseses, the Warhols, and so forth.
New American
Wing, a witty trio who are worthy of their name and its attendant irony,
paste together differing musical bits and build delightful little examples
of box reconstruction and rethinking. You know, the box everybody seems
to want to think outside of.
Cellist Erica
Sattin, guitarist Dan Raimi, and trumpet player Jacob Varmus will set up
a grave-faced bossa nova with some wintry Northern European underpinnings
("The Hare"), follow on its heels a buzzsaw, Monklike humoresque
for all voices ("x"), and cleanse the aural palate thereafter
with a trance ballad of sorts that is not without its own humor or pathos
("Third Man"). Sometimes there's both at once.
No mood is
held for so long that it becomes oppressive or hackneyed (listen for Raimi's
folky strumming under Sattin's dour bowing while Varmus lays out in "Over
and Over"). As soon as you're used to one motif or one attitude, another
follows on just as thoughtful or arresting.
A cover of
Carl Testa's "Line Drawing #18" gets as concentrated a reading
from Raimi as Marc Ribot has been known to do for John Zorn's klezmer-for-Schostakovich-fans
chamber Masada project, and Varmus's clouds of muted trumpet lend a sweetness
to the cello-swathed "Toxic." Which isn't.
In fact, New
American Wing are mixing musical imperatives ably in a way only Dave Willey's
Hamster Theatre has been doing (oh, yes, Montreal's favorite sons Miriodor
have as well--they're just a lot more electric about it). And although you
will be able to shriek, as my fifteen-year-old son did while I was playing
this repeatedly, "It's not loud enough. I can still hear myself think!"
well, why would we like to avoid that at all costs? I believe you'll be
able to reply with some spunk, "Exactly the point."
Get this. Lovely
Eric Carle-like cover of a winged centipede (hence the irony) by Lizzie
Taylor.
by
Ken Egbert
Back to: August 2005 Vol. 15 No. 4 Table of Contents
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