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On the latest release from Nomi Epstein’s experimental-music troupe a·pe·ri·od·ic, composer Magnus Granberg explores structural indeterminacy within pre-determined profiles. That’s a fancy Latinate way of talking about the same thing that gives jazz its impulsive character: improvisation within a fixed template, in jazz’s case the chord changes and the A and B sections.
A second similarity between jazz and Granberg’s Aus der Nacht, von den Wehen is the use of acoustic instruments played by human musicians. Here it’s an ensemble of winds, cello, prepared piano, percussion, and voice. We’ve come to expect electronics in experimental music (not to mention in pop music). Instead, Granberg’s explorations rely on the experimental possibilities of traditional instruments.
Surface similarities (and verbiage) aside, this work is as different from jazz as a plectrum from a bass drum. The 45-minute opus consists of 71 more-or-less contiguous segments. In each, high-pitched sources play extended tones while other instruments – prepared piano, percussion, cello – make abstract conversation among themselves. That, it seems, is where much of the indeterminacy lies. Each performance will be different.
The sound vocabulary remains mostly static, however. As a result, when a new timbre emerges it marks a noticeable shift. Still, an overall coldness in the environment may make a listener search for flickers of soul. Can they be found in the skewed harmonies that introduce each section before giving way after a fraction of a second to single-note or microtonal sustains? Or in the eventually hypnotic effect of those sustains? In the all-too-human waverings of the voice and the flute? In the woody plucks on the cello?
But then one might realize that seeking “soul” might be the wrong approach – or not the only one. A work like this asks us to exercise our patience, something in short supply these days – to listen closely to a spread of sound over time without imposing expectations on it. Experiments, by nature, don’t ride in well-worn grooves. It’s always worth jumping the track and sliding, even at risk of skidding, into unknown territory. a·pe·ri·od·ic is one of those outfits that continue to cast light into previously obscure spaces and ask (or dare) us to follow.
What’s that rumbling that suddenly appears in the last few minutes? Is a deeper cave opening up beneath us? Is the footing safe? And what’s that ghostly vibrating voice? We’ll never know unless we go.
Aus der Nacht from a·pe·ri·od·ic is out now on New Focus Recordings and available at Bandcamp.
