Lauren Redhead & Alistair Zaldua – San Servolo Registri Festival Concert

by 5:4

An interesting album that came out quite late last year is San Servolo Registri Festival Concert, featuring assorted organ-based electroacoustic works performed by Lauren Redhead and Alistair Zaldua. It’s a curious mixture of music, yet while the pieces demonstrate a certain amount of diversity, several of them share aspects in common. The first thing to say is that you can safely ignore the final piece, Annette Schmucki’s 54 stops, grésillement, alphabet des rauschens, as it really is nothing more than 13 minutes of the most irritatingly time-wasting nonsense. Thankfully, the rest of the album is very much more compelling.

Two of the pieces don’t entirely work. clints and grykes by Mike Vaughan builds in a highly satisfying way, progressing from what seems to be a trying-out of ideas: triads, phrases, trills, growing more assertive. It passes through various episodes where the intensity varies considerably, but usually bringing together a mixture of fast and slow elements simultaneously. Some of these are repetitious, like obsessive processes being worked through, others have more sense of abandon, laden with filigree and flourishes, while at times the electronics dominate, though not for long. In its latter stages it becomes somewhat disoriented, though it’s perhaps less a confusion of ideas than a bringing together of the various elements heard throughout.

Alistair Zaldua‘s Redrick S, referencing the protagonist in the Strugatsky brothers’ novel Roadside Picnic (which, entirely coincidentally, i finished reading just a few days ago), also brings together slow and fast elements, and also begins haltingly, with lovely, shimmering clusters. More shrill, edgy stuff moves into the foreground, whereafter there’s a tension between exciting frenetic swells and strange, seemingly sped-up electronic stuff, and less energetic – though no less energised – pitch and chord ideas. There’s an especially nice moment around five minutes in when the piece emerges into a highly tremulously place with chords audible in the distance, though it seems to lose coherence in its closing couple of minutes.

Prominence is given to the uppermost register of the organ in two works. In Celestial Objects II by Michael Bonaventure a high cluster is an occasional presence, its tight, piercing quality like a sharp beam of vivid light coming and going, cutting through a gentle chord sequence and low drone (performed on that most extreme of stops, a 64-foot reed). The piece has a decidedly ambient quality, and creates a wonderfully inviting and immersive soundscape, not in any way challenged by that intense cluster, which beguilingly evaporates right at the end. In Sophie Stone‘s postcard sized pieces the organ stops are treated literally, as on/off-switches forming a continually reconstituted pitch network. All of this plays out in the stratosphere, while below it we hear occasional mechanical thunks and, briefly later, the sound of water. Toward the end an enigmatic electronic two-note motif materialises, quietly heralding the conclusion of this beautiful, elusive composition.

One of the most striking pieces on the album is Lauren Redhead‘s curse tablets. Here too we hear fast and slow elements, though coexisting in a more convoluted, and more compelling way. A dense high cluster appears to be made out of notes all jostling for position, while a foghorn-like chord calls below and a shimmering cloud starts to take shape. On a couple of occasions (~1:27, ~3:10) the atmosphere clears for a while, the first time leading to bursts of rapid but murky movement, the second to an unclear acceleration. This comes out the other end in a gorgeous stratified texture, somewhat dronal below, with different kinds of clusters in the middle and high above, improbably ending up clarified into simple octaves and fifths.

Best of all is the kestrel stands haloed before the sun by Huw Morgan. The piece brings together an exquisite mix of light, pitched percussion sounds and very high sustained organ notes (positioned after Sophie Stone’s piece on the album, it almost works as an elaborate continuation). The attitude of the piece is polarised: from one perspective, transfixed, basking in radiance; from the other, restless, bristling with energy and exhilaration. Though opposite, they form a sympathetic combination in which the long-held pitches are enlivened by tremolos and impacts. It’s just a shame it’s all over in a little over four minutes.

Released last October, San Servolo Registri Festival Concert is available as a free download from Lauren Redhead’s Bandcamp site.

Enjoyed this article? Support 5:4 on Patreon from just $2 a month!
Become a patron at Patreon!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Christopher

“clints and grykes”? How very “GCSE Geography!” I shall try and picture the top of Malham Cove as I listen…

1
0
Click here to respond and leave a commentx
()
x