“Meubles” reviewed by Chain DLK

Meubles
Although it’s quite rare that each instrument of Works’n’Days, a nice international ensemble of many improvisers – covering a wide range of instruments such as guitars, violins, saxophones, electric organs, flute, piano, cello, percussions and sampler -, which has been grouped together by young and inventive Lithuanian composer Arturas Bumsteinas, manages to conclude a musical phrase by itself before another musical voice bursts on the scene, they chorally succeeds in evoking hearth and home as if the whole furnishings and househols effects got turned into a resounding orchestra by some sorcery. Named after the didactic poem by ancient Greek poet Hesiod in the form of a farmer’s almanac, which is probably better known for some notorious stories about human condition such as the ones of Pandora and Prometheus, this debut release, which seems to quote Erik Satie’s furniture music (musique d’ameublement), tracks an original domestic arrangement down for a genre like improvisational music that some listeners erroneously keep on consider as an snobbishly intellectual enjoyment. Unlike Satie’s furniture music, as we cited it, or similar more or less theoretical models, the lukeworm long-lasting three suites of “Meubles” cannot be filed under background music as some instruments find the way to stand it out by sudden rashes or by pleasant phrases (or paraphrases) and this aspect is clear both in the initial “Hszcz”, where the parts of each instrument are more fragmentary, and in the following “Llull” and the alluring “David”, where some motifs sounds more vaguely agglutinating. You can try this at home!

via Chain DLK