Erase the Fake

A very original CD combining modern acoustic blues with avant-garde electronics and a netherworld sensibility. This is played by the band Some Over History: Arthur Jarvinen on bell plates, electric bass, harmonicas, and electronics, Robin Lorentz on violin, Marty Walker on bass clarinet, and Toby Holmes on trombone, tuba, and acoustic bass. The selections are: "Out of the Blue," a gentle, introductory piece of about four-and-a-half-minutes' duration built from slowly articulated strikes on gamelan-like bell plates; "Erase the Fake," which features odd solos, from deep funk to high-energy squawk, built over and separated by a droll and rolling 12/8 blues riff; "Cheap Suit Tango," which begins with a tinny harmonica rendition of the theme played back over a cheap loudspeaker, and a sad little tango following in slightly higher-fi for "sauve" trombone and timidly yielding violin; "Toys Do Not Walk and Talk," an animated yet funky five-beat theme for the acoustic instruments that has a "downtown" and Kurt Weill-ish mood; and "No Blues," a strangely evocative harmonica solo (with a bebop-humor quote from "Oh, Susannah") with live samples that circulate as pulses, and occasional heavy-breathing noises. The five parts from "The Hole-Flow Symphony" are the "Introduction," which opens with a mechanical droning sound and machine-like, rhythmically telegraphing figures like a bunch of mechanical toys, leading directly into "Edges," which is built of scratching string sounds, wind harmonics, electronics, and other sounds on the "edges" of the usual way of playing the instruments; "Musette/Drones and Bones" features a sax solo over a buzzing electronic sound like a small fly with occasional sustained strings...the electronics then switch to a low-pitched, mysterious drone underscoring a trombone solo and a grippingly destitute sustained string/harmonica theme (the harmonica is amplified through a bullhorn); and "Spewl," an extremely odd mobile of pulsed fragments and riffs; the sound material for the Symphony is generated from a complex of guitar effects-boxes which are all plugged into each other in a feedback matrix (outputs are fed back to inputs). Slight manual changes in the settings of the boxes will then create richly modulated signals. (Feedback matrices have been used by many other electronic composers, and this arrangement using guitar effects-boxes is somewhat similar to that used by Lou Reed for his radical CD The Amino-Beta Ring, but Jarvinen's creation is unique in his sound choices and for his controlled use of this dynamic instrument). ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Rovi