I’ve enjoyed the music of Norway’s Pjusk since 2007’s Sart came out on the impeccable 12k label run by Taylor Deupree. Now the sole project of founding member Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik, Pjusk’s latest release is titled Skoddeheim and the track Immersion seemed an easy fit for a blend of several images and video clips I’ve made over the last couple of years on my travels. And I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure of the exact pronunciation of Pjusk either! But check it out. There are a lot of gorgeous, atmospheric recordings here. I hope you enjoy the video! https://pjusk.bandcamp.com/
In Carol Reed’s classic film The Third Man, set in occupied post-war Vienna, Orson Welles delivers a famous line: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!” The trouble is, the cuckoo clock was actually a Bavarian invention. Despite such comically grave historical errors, the idea that the Swiss are often pegged as masters of clock making and time keeping persists. But what a great lead in to discuss a Swiss musician who is very much a master time keeper (and shifter)! Moreover he uses a complex instrument that requires precise tuning which can be repeatedly struck in a pleasing manner. So perhaps half a millennium of democracy of peace has actually lead us to the music of Nik Bärtsch!
Nik Bärtsch is based in Zurich and his long standing group Ronin occupy an interesting space in contemporary music. It’s easiest to call it a fusion of minimalism (notably related to the more rhythm-focused work of Steve Reich who trained in Ghana early in his career) and jazz funk. It’s a tense, invigourating tapestry of hammered notes which gradually shift and interpolate to lock into and embrace a kind of circular weave of pulsing reeds. It is a music both delicate and forceful in equal measure. “Ritual groove music” is how he has described it. But it is also a meditation practice of sorts. Unsurprisingly Bärtsch is a keen martial arts practitioner and runs workshops to develop mastery of rhythm. And those lessons, like many associated with certain martial arts, apply to the art of living in general.
When I listen to virtually any of his recordings I am aware of the discipline that underpins the playing. He has 7 albums out on ECM and I have enjoyed every one. While I can recall the album titles, I can’t remember any of the track titles as each piece is given a module number. There are a lot of them. And they are multiplying! But I recommend each and every one of the discs released by ECM as they all bear repeated listens and consistently yield new insights.
After seeing him in the 2011 ECM film Sounds and Silence – Travels with Manfred Eicher I knew this would be a great band to see live and on April 1st of this year I finally got the chance at the Fox as one of only two Canadian dates on his 2024 tour. Though led by Nik at the piano, the lid always open for a pluck a stroke or a whack of its innards, the group seems to take turns propelling the music and playing off one another. In concert each member demands your attention in turns and makes it clear this is group music making at its finest. It really is a thrill ride. Drummer Kaspar Rust is incredible to watch. And I’ve always been partial to bass clarinet so it was a pleasure to finally see Sha performing in person. The Fox is one of my least favourite venues for concentrated listening but this group smoulders and ignites no matter the setting.
Nik is tall and quick to smile. Friendly and open to meeting new friends and fans on the road. It is ideal. We got on well and did some portraits behind the Fox, in the alley directly off Main and 8th on a nice warm evening. He is dressed in a perhaps bespoke (come on, it’s Main street!) flowing black robe-like outfit that seems perfectly designed for comfort and movement, elegance and perhaps even ritual. I feel a genuine warmth and patience and joy that very much carries through on stage. Even if things are not always smooth on the road it doesn’t show one whit in his demeanor. A lovely time and discussion. I sense his dojos and dinner conversations would be an equal treat.
In addition to his recordings on ECM Nik does a monthly residency in Zurich, at a club he co owns. It is billed as a kind of recurring music dojo that if you are in Europe is very much worth catching live. There is also a subscription option to the livestreams as well.
Winter was full of surprises this year but I had not counted on experiencing an immersive 4D audio performance by Carmel, California-based Robert Rich, an ambient music composer I’ve admired for decades now and whose concerts only ever appeared to be happening light years away. But there it was, listed for February 21st, as part of the Mother CloudFestival at Performance Works on Granville Island, presented by Lobe Studio and the Strathcona Spatial Sound Society.
Robert hasn’t played here for decades and in the intervening years he’s done some amazing work so for me it was a must see/hear event, all the more so because Lobe is dedicated to staging great sounding concerts with listener comfort in mind, something that, believe me, gets more important after nearly 50 years of concert going! There are dozens of discreetly placed, uniquely designed speakers throughout the space enabling the movement of sound across many trajectories and embodying the full range of frequencies available to the human ear. This is far beyond the quad systems of the 70s and is more akin to the diffusion sound systems used by the European “acousmatic” composers, where sound objects can be convincingly placed anywhere in the room. It’s truly immersive.
For those in the dark, Robert Rich has, for decades, been performing exquisite long-form ambient music works that sometimes literally stretch overnight in the form of “sleep concerts’ (Sorry Max Richter fans, Robert was well in front in this regard). These began in 1982 and were partly inspired by Indonesian all night concerts or even Terry Riley’s lengthy and hypnotic all night keyboard improvisations of the 60s and 70s.
Of the longer works, Robert has released two DVD Audio discs with tracks spanning a total of 15 hours of music. These pieces are created in such a way as to maximize integration with the various states we experience during the sleep cycle. While there is some compression required to fit such large files (even utilizing the DVD audio format) the sounds are subtle, hypnotizing and capable of holding you in suspension while in half-sleep. It also works as a kind of somatic aural balm that can run constantly in the background day or night. It’s truly great ambient music, adhering to its “founding principles” if you will.
And it all works beautifully in a live setting as well, with Robert doing more “regular” concerts in theatres, planetariums, concert halls and cathedrals that deliver a communal and faithful experience of what his recordings offer. These feature all the hallmarks of his music; rich atmospheric beds of sound, subtly blended field recordings and breathy PVC flute playing. There are long, sustatined synth tones, and occasional arpeggiated passages that will appeal to, say, Tangerine Dream fans. He also uses a custom slide guitar and a unique touch pad synth to ensure there is a distinct, human touch in the mix resulting in a kind of “cosmic blues” feel here and there.
I’ve often felt that European ambient artists tend towards creating more abstract sound worlds while Americans seem to want to soundtrack something that yearns to evoke a sci-fi film narrative set on a lush jungle planet. While the tag “dark ambient” or “tribal” is sometimes afixed to Robert’s music, for the most part he avoids that trap. Rather, the music tends to occupy that rarified space where the mind can find a degree mutability within his sound worlds, much like Eno’s On Land continues to allow listeners to do after four decades.
What was extra special about the Mother Cloud Festival concert was the attention paid to comfort and overall environs for listening. This is very much Lobe’s thing. The space was not too crowded and a variety of soft listening chairs and cushions were spread about the room with several options for a diverse audience to find comfort. I don’t remember how long the concert was. I think it was long but it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t thinking at all about physical discomfort and that is essential for receptivity to long pieces of music.
It was also a joy to spend the better part of a day hanging out and talking family, food, politics, the state of music appreciation (or not) in society at large and all manner of things. Robert is generous and welcoming and a great creative spirit.
I will single out my favourite releases for your consideration: Humidity (three live concerts on separate discs), Echo of Small Things and the awesome Perpetual: ASomnium Continuum which contains two of his most recent, complete and magnificent multi-hour sleep opuses. These pieces are timeless and perennial. Additionally, a brand new live collaboration with fellow traveler Steve Roach, Waves of Now, is one of the few downloads I’ve ever bought. So I’ll leave you with some links. Please do take the time, because this is a man who will make you forget time in a very beautiful way.
fireseed is the title of a new collaborative videopoem I did with Catherine Graham with original music by Benoit Pioulard (see earlier post titled The Quiet Ones for more on him). But when the music ran a little long I decided to make a straight music video version with a different ending. It then became fireseed v 2.0!
This is the poster version of the cover of the new CD by Vancouver saxophone quartet Saxophilia coming out in September. The name of the group and the titles of their releases have been perfect for the use of Marian Bantjes’ and Ross Mills’ intricate font “Restraint”. And here is the actual CD with screen printed disc!
Of all the historic photo processes to emulate in the digital sphere, the cyanotype would seem to be among the easiest. But no. When doing a suite of 10 posters for Friends of Chamber Music’s 75th season I discovered that it requires a lot of tweaking, especially when you are scanning instrument parts with many tonal variations. Of course a true cyanotype would render, say, the cello bridge or piano mechanisms as largely white, outlined objects. But I wanted more detail so they ended up more like a cross between cyanotype and x-ray. And that’s what ate up all the photoshop time. That, and cyan tone matching after the fact. The dishtowel made a convincing background though, especially with an additional texture added via an outboard software that is no longer made. I probably should have just gone out with the bits and pieces, placed them on a piece of photochemical-treated paper and let the sun do the work!
This new video was premiered at the MANTIS Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music at the University of Manchester (UK) on November 27th, 2022 and will see more screenings throughout 2023. It’s a unique hybrid project that I developed with composer David Berezan during the first two years of the pandemic. It took a while to take this final form and for an appropriate title to emerge but David Berezan and I immediately took to Hydrology. I strongly advise a big screen and good sound system!
HYDROLOGY – the study of the distribution and movement of water both on and below the Earth’s surface, as well as the impact of human activity on water availability and conditions.
Work on Hydrology began during the first post-covid lockdown “re-opening” in the summer of 2020. At the first opportunity I revisited the banks of the Capilano River where I grew up in the shadow of Cleveland Dam during the 1970s. Built in 1954, the dam necessitated the downstream construction of the Capilano Salmon Hatchery in 1971 after it choked off the natural salmon spawning grounds, transforming them into one of Vancouver’s three main lake reservoirs. These were two human interventions into natural water flows and processes which I never questioned at the time. But revisting this place during climate breakdown and a pandemic had me fearing for these systems on many levels.
I set myself the task of photographing the rushing waters of the river, using slow shutter speeds paired with deliberate hand held camera movement. I then moved on to the slower moving, semi-sheltered waters around Galiano Island, the open waters of the Salish Sea and finally to the play of water over rock, flora and fauna in the intertidal zones at Cape Roger Curtis at the southern tip of Bowen Island. I learned to observe the ever changing surfaces, to identify changing palettes and how to capture the water’s movement in a way that either complimented the flow or went against it. Then came the decision to merge it all in video form.
At this point, composer David Berezan came on to the project as we’d established a relationship between his music and my photography when working on cover imagery for his CD releases in recent years. In particular, his last release on empreintes DIGITALes; Cycle Nautique presented a soundworld and way forward for this project. His interest in playing the macro and micro soundworlds of ocean sounds off of each other and our mutual interest in ambient music made this a perfect partnership.
Pacing was critical. The opening sequence uses time lapse photography to introduce the subject matter then shifts to slowing, animated stills taking the viewer into less certain territory where things begin to become more abstract. And I’m always interested in slowing the perception of time.
The animation is intended to confound expectation, as nature sometimes does, with the currents and flows deliberately altered. There is always something slightly off about the images in the same way we know something is slightly off about our weather patterns. There is also the perception of scale. Sometimes the camera is inches from water, other times a hundred metres or so. Blending the two enhances the effect.
Much of the colour comes from the images made at Cape Roger Curtis. The vibrant reds, greens, blues and golds come from the play of light and water on rock formations covered with kelp, mussels, algae and so forth. But the shocking and unprecedented “heat dome” weather event of June 2021 affected billions of sea creatures in BC’s tidal waters, baking them during a horribly timed extreme low tide. And it was in August of 2021 that I created several of the stills used in this production so, consequently, the tans, reds and oranges, as lovely as they are, are the result of this catastrophe; the colour of death and decay. In other words, climate change has directly affected the colour palette you see in the video.
In the end, the video is intended to beguile the viewer and stir interest in the power, beauty and predicament of our ecosystems.
The first Vancouver Jazz Fest since the “end” of the pandemic happened in the summer of 2022 just as I was headed out of town for a much delayed getaway. Fortunately I was able to catch just one concert, one which required a pilgrimage to deepest, darkest North Vancouver (where I’m actually from) to see Tord Gustavsen’s current trio featuring bassist Steinar Raknes and the redoubtable and magnificent Jarle Vespestad on drums.
The clouds were gathering and threatening rain and I arrived to find the band without their luggage (courtesy of Air Canada whose motto remains: “We’re not happy ’til you’re not happy!”) and Tord’s iPad, which he uses to control electronic effects, was smashed. But at least there was some time to sort things out prior to showtime so we took the opportunity to do an impromptu shoot. The light was failing and the darkening sky was starting to spit, but we managed to squeeze in a number of photos against the concrete backdrop of the Blueshore Centre’s exterior wall. It was all very fitting.
I made mention of the concerts I’d seen at pevious jazz fests where gear was lost but the concerts turned out to be great successes. I’m thinking of Eivind Aarset’s improvised gig on a borrowed Stratocaster sans effects rig (due to lost luggage, again Air Canada) at Performance Works a number of years ago. Then there was Marcin Wasilewski’s 2016 set at The Ironworks where there was, for some reason, no piano at the venue and it was a Sunday night! He made great use of a borrowed Fender Rhodes and a hastilly arranged upright!
I’ve written before about how Tord’s music, on first impression, seems almost too tasteful and consistent, largely lyrical and romantic. But his numerous recordings on ECM have marked a subtle and very personal forward-looking evolution. The latest CD is called Opening and in addition to the title track there is piece called Re-Opening. Both titles can be viewed in light of the recent pandemic-driven societal convulsions, the shutting down of cities and personal connections. Indeed just meeting up with Tord again and being in a concert hall felt like an enormously reassuring return to some version of normality, but with a fraught air as we all acknowledge things are now permanently unsettled for a greater number of people for a greater number of reasons.
In the end, it all worked out. One thing I’ve learned form the live experience of Tord’s music is that the equal measures of seriousness, lightness and joy that characterize the bulk of his early recordings can be quickly given over to the unexpected and you can soon be galloping along with the trio on a sudden, improvised bolt before settling down to something like an exquisite cover of Suzanne by Leonard Cohen. Between songs Tord speaks to the audience in a whisper, as if in church. And for him I suppose it is. There has always been a kind of devotional aspect to concerts by this soft-spoken artist and I’ve rarely been to jazz concerts of any stripe where the audience is so quiet. The relief at being able to rejoin this kind of communion (and I say this as an athiest) was palpable and as long as things remain open we will likely enjoy many more visits, though hopefully the airlines will have sorted out their luggage handling procedures!
I’ve photographed Vancouver’s much-loved and spectacularly talented Veda Hille since 1998. I’ve done cover shoots for the Georgia Straight, feature spreads for Vancouver Review (both netting regional and national magazine award nominations) and, most recently in 2016 for Vancouver Review Media around the time of her work and performance with Harold Budd.
In my view, her two most recent albums are her very best, both in terms of songwriting and production. Love Waves even included covers of Bowie and Eno/Roedelius that were truly transformative. Her latest is called Beach Practice and includes an adaptation of a much loved poem by W.H. Auden which she’s performing as Time.
I had some things lying about my desktop that seemed to fit the mood so we endeavored to do a video for it. Above is a portrait/still associated with the video which can be seen via the Vancouver Review Media site. We’re pretty happy with it!
I’m very glad to be wrapping another cover for the illustrious EVENT magazine. This was taken pre-pandemic on the ferry to Port Townsend, Washington in 2019. It fairly sums up the mood of many of us as we face an uncertain summer…and beyond. Yet it also feels nostalgic for summer island trips beloved of many of us coastal inhabitants. This is a slightly tweaked version that removes the barcode and shifts the back cover text to allow for better viewing as a double page spread.
Mark Mushet Photography 