"BLUE" GENE TYRANNY / The Somewhere Songs
Thomas Buckner (baritone voice); "Blue" Gene Tyranny (piano); Peter Gordon (sax); Conrad Harris (violin); Pauline Kim (violin); Lev Zhurbin (viola); Ariane Lallemand (cello); Jay Elfinbein (bass); Luke Winslow-King (resonator guitar); Alan Johnson (conductor)
"The most original aspect of Tyranny's works is the way they create continuity: they're tonal, yet rigorously asymmetrical. They satisfy the ear without letting it take anything for granted. They evolve, not with the cyclic predictability of everyday life, but with the labyrinthine irreversibility of deep psychic forces. They say what they have to say perfectly." - Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
This beautiful new recording by "Blue" Gene Tyranny includes the mysterious The Somewhere Songs cycle (1997-2001) for baritone voice and electronics, and The Invention of Memory (2003-2005) a lyrical discourse for baritone voice, string ensemble, guitar, and piano, The Somewhere Songs concerns friendships in or undergoing difficult circumstances. The narrator, in a sense, builds his own circumstantial world as he sings - the vocal part was composed first by singing spontaneously and the "transitional systems" (pitch/rhythm, etc., material) were derived from that vocal line to generate other acoustic and electronic parts. The question of the "true intentions" of the two former friends is of course left to the listener. The Invention of Memory is about the behavior and physiology of the brain.
In the course of reading, Tyranny was struck by what seemed to be rough parallels between the way that people have described forms of memory and certain musical procedures. This thought created a strange sensation in him - something about the true nature of music. The Invention of Memory was written to research this nameless correlation. An initial "Song", heard in a piano solo at the outset, provides a basic reference to which the players return, similar to a past event that is recalled in varied ways. The Song is then "scanned" by the players employing different musical procedures. Some of the musical forms employed are traditional (canonic imitation, passacaglia) while the majority are compositional procedures Tyranny developed for earlier pieces, including melodic transfers within a closed loop (from the transformational lattice score of Stars Over San Francisco,1972), drone with internal motion (from The Interior Distance,1959), camouflage (from Sleeping Beauty in Camouflage, 1992), and the song modulated by its own internal voice ("gravity" modulation from The Driver's Son, 1989 - present).
TRACK LIST
The Somewhere Songs (for baritone, environmental and electronic sounds):
Somewhere in Arizona 1970 (10:03)
Somewhere in Search of Heaven, A.D. 999 (8:25)
Somewhere inside the Red Circle (6:09)
The Invention of Memory (for baritone, string ensemble, guitar, piano):
Now Minus One (1:13)
What I Feel Now (2:36)
I Can't Get You Out of My Mind (3:11)
I Felt You Calling Me (3:49)
Don' t Forget (Our Strange Love) (5:03)
Her Name Was... (5:47)
You've Been Here Before (6:01)
If Memory Serves Me Well (3:50)
Now Plus One (3:26)
REVIEWS
A body of pure music: Love- and torch songs celebrating the joy of being alive and lamenting the horror of disappearing in death.
There is a quote by Claude Debussy which goes something like this: “Every masterpiece establishes a set of laws. But the laws don’t come first”. What he meant, of course, was, that the idea of dogmatic “schools” was inherently contradictory to the notion of freedom in expressing oneself through composition. In striking opposition to the past 1000 years of musical history, his view was focussed on the work rather than its creator and on setting aside one’s own reservations in favour of artistic demands. After listening to “The Somewhere Songs/The Invention of Memory”, one can assume “Blue” Gene Tyranny to share this perspective.
After all, both “The Somewhere Songs”, congenially performed by Thomas Buckner (Voice) and Peter Gordon (“Sax Wild Tracks”) here and “The Invention of Memory” for a small acoustic ensemble including Tyranny himself, are as far away from any artistic “debates”, “directions”, “traditions” and “movements” that merely listening to them makes you wonder where on earth they came from. The all-too familiar celebration of the same old same is as triumphantly absent here as the puberscent defiance of everything held to be good by those who came before. And after the last note has died down, the slate of creative possibilities suddenly seems clean again.
All of this is happening in dreamtime and without the use of force or the sounding of revolutionary fanfares. On paper, “The Somewhere Songs” are nothing but a tripart piece of evolving electro-orchestral arrangements and Thomas Buckner’s hypnotic dramaturgic narrative. On paper, too, “The Invention of Memory” merely constitutes a somewhat lengthy collection of suprisingly anthemic contemporary Lieder. From a mechanistical point of view, we are in the territory of conventional tonality here, of harmonious harmonies, recognisable melodies and (heaven forbid) songs. What, then, makes these pieces stand out?
On the one hand, their unparalled compositional drive and emotional empathy. On “The Invention of Memory”, Tyranny conjures up a stirring cornucopia of nostalgic images and homesick associations through his heartwrenching chord schemes which Buckner haunts like a fearful ghosts from the past. Every word could be the last here, every beginning mournfully anticipates its end regardless of how inventive and complex these pieces have been composed and structured, their essence is stupifyingly fundamental. It almost doesn’t seem to matter what these tracks are really about - they all sound like love- and torch songs, either celebrating the joy of being alive and lamenting the horror of disappearing in death.
On the other, their unique fusion of voice, word and music, which takes Robert Ashley’s similarly poled ideas regarding Opera to a chambermusical setting. “The Somewhere Songs” are essentially a radio play, theatre, audio book and a collection of songs in one. Sometimes, the sounds will follow Buckner’s melodies, which in turn are shaped by the content of the story to be told. On other occasions, the music dictates which way to go, melodies and harmonies following in its slipstream.
As a consequence, the theoretical skeleton behind the score starts to disintegrate, leaving nothing but a body of pure music. Typical time measures mean nothing here, nor do concepts of tonality or tradition. If it still seems to be bound to some familiar concepts, then that is the result of the only law this album seems to adhere to: That it was written by a human being for a human audience. Other than that, “The Somewhere Songs/The Invention of Memory” is just as free from dogma and cliche as Debussy would have wanted.
A renowned partner in crime of Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, Carla Bley and then some, “Blue” Gene Tyranny is rarely highlighted as a composer. Perhaps this is due to the deceptively simple façade of a good portion of his music, which hides finesse and attention to detail behind a veil of apparent weightlessness, typically explicated by the use of relatively straightforward traits and, quite frequently, synthetic presets that sound terrible on a first listen, until we become conscious of their necessity in the economy of the piece.
But here’s a completely different story. This CD, released in July 2008 – mea maxima culpa for getting my hands on it so late - contains the best work heard from Tyranny in a long time, two song cycles entirely revolving around the voice of baritone Thomas Buckner. “The Somewhere Songs” utilizes environmental exhalations and electronic foams to enhance an essential concept, that of the problematic evolution of personal friendship under difficult circumstances, the lyrics suggested by disparate sources such as psychologist Bernhold Schwartz’s hypnotic regression experiments and Zoroaster. “The Invention Of Memory” was generated by the composer’s interest for the “rough parallels between the way that people have described forms of memory and certain musical procedures” and is instead orchestrated acoustically. The thought-provoking subjects are analyzed with cleverness, class and – particularly in the latter series – are dressed with abundant doses of heart-touching grace, their aural impact literally carved from the wood block of individual receptiveness. An unfocused reading and/or a distracted listening won’t reveal anything of the unsuspected complexity of the underlying notions, although one remains with the impression of having barely scratched the surface of Tyranny’s intentions even after repeated scrutiny.
The general temperament of “The Somewhere Songs” is unquestionably investigational but in the stoned acceptation of the term, up to a point of near-detachment from reality. Buckner’s narration is at times processed and somehow recycled in particular segments, bizarre parallelisms and intersections occurring amidst outlandish intangibility and reminiscences of tunes from the 70s by the same musician, the edges of our intellectual capacity blurred by the obscure magnetism of the music. The genuine masterpiece comes with the nine chapters of “The Invention Of Memory”, which mix ancient structures like passacaglia and canon with techniques developed by Tyranny for some of his earlier pieces. Still, no technical explanation can exemplify the restrained luminosity of several of these gems, physically improved by the acoustic nature of the score (for baritone, string ensemble, guitar and piano). A whole set of microcosms - informed by small chamber, minimalist and popular melody-based sonic strategies - is recounted by Buckner’s dignified interpretation, which never transcends to excessive mellowness. The sequence is - purely and simply - poignantly stunning, “I Felt You Calling Me”, “You’ve Been Here Before” and “If Memory Serves Me Well,” three goosebump-inducing paradigms defining the record as worthy of classic status. A handful of influences admirably blended and morphed into a distinctive approach, high-quality miniatures attesting Tyranny’s giftedness once and for all (at least when he decides to let everybody know what he’s actually capable of conceiving, which does not always happen - for modesty or else).
An album whose theoretical compass spreads well beyond the inadequate instructive potential of a mere review, The Somewhere Songs / The Invention Of Memory has to be very highly recommended without further explanation. Those still able to get stirred by specific harmonic combinations will find out why with just a couple of spins.
