{"id":7257,"date":"2014-09-02T12:48:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T11:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=7257"},"modified":"2017-01-03T14:38:27","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T13:38:27","slug":"meubles-reviewed-by-the-sound-projector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=7257","title":{"rendered":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Meubles\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reviewed by The Sound Projector"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Meubles\"<\/a>
\nAnother fine item from Arturas Bum\u00c5\u00a1teinas, already noted earlier this year with his concept album themed on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sleep\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. For Meubles (CR\u00c3\u201cNICA 081-2013), he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enlisted a small ensemble of players from Poland and elsewhere, called them the Works and Days Ensemble, and commissioned them to perform the three suites of music. Meubles is a concept album about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153furniture\u00e2\u20ac\u009d*. By way of underpinning the project theme, each musician was asked the poignant question \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If music could be furniture, which piece of furniture it would be?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Their replies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all very imaginative, individual and personal in their interpretation of this vague and open-ended question \u00e2\u20ac\u201c result in an almost surrealist catalogue of objects, including a wine cabinet, a stove, a bed, a window, and (my personal favourite) a Billy bookcase from Ikea. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my guess that these responses have been the basis for the score of the Meubles suite. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m all in favour of using unconventional methods to fuel the generation of music. If Stockhausen could write prose instructions for his players for Aus Den Sieben Tagen, then why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Bum\u00c5\u00a1teinas get his players to concentrate on a piece of furniture to help them focus on the music production? As the Ensemble perform their (semi-improvised?) parts, the instruments \u00e2\u20ac\u201c brass, strings, piano, guitars, percussion and organ \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all wrap around each other with the intimacy of a fitted carpet lying snugly in place in a well-appointed room. There are no patterns or melodies that I can discern, but the continual music does hang together in a very harmonious and pleasing manner; no hideous discordant moments await the listener. Slow and syrupy it be, but certainly not formless drone. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nice to hear such concord and agreement between people, and it all conveys the pleasant sense of stability that you might associate with a good armchair. From November 2013.<\/p>\n

* The astute reader will of course be aware of Erik Satie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s furniture music, where the idea was to provide background music for specific events and occasions in salon society, such as drinking tea or playing croquet. Satie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work is commonly taken, perhaps wrongly, to be the forerunner of ambient music. No doubt Bum\u00c5\u00a1teinas is aware of this too, but he makes no explicit connection to Satie with this composition. Nor to Bill Nelson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Red Noise, I might add. Ed Pinsent<\/em><\/p>\n

via The Sound Projector<\/a><\/p>\n