Doctor Nerve
Armed Observation / Out To Bomb Fresh Kings

I'm certainly not someone with a good memory, yet I can even remember the music I listened to during the trip that evening about fifteen years ago.

The Fred Frith Quartet was set to perform in a few days and I thought about someone with whom to share the moment, but who? By then, all the probable candidates had already submitted themselves to the terrible experience of my live "musical gems" and no one was willing to risk it anymore.

Resigned, I peacefully covered the seventy kilometers separating my pale birthplace from the city of Trieste, accompanied by a cassette with the "Cobra" project by John Zorn recorded on it.

The theater, the bar, and the social center are the places where I've best appreciated live music. The theater is the coldest of the three, with the musicians' space distinctly separated from the audience, but it always gains in acoustic quality.

The concert at the Miela theater was part of a series dedicated to "borderline music," a name rather appropriate for the city hosting it as well.

After the performance, I approached the stage; Fred Frith quickly disappeared behind the scenes. Public relations were instead handled by Nick Didkovsky with whom I chatted a bit before buying the quartet's CD and this one here that I'm about to present to you:

"Armed Observation / Out To Bomb Fresh Kings" was released in 1992 by Cuneiform and brings together the first two EPs by Doctor Nerve, the first released in '85 (Punos Music and No man's Land), and the second in '87 by Cuneiform itself and produced by Didkovsky and Fred Frith.

I would dare to place this CD in the realm of the purest avant-rock (paradoxically), but I find it difficult to gauge whether this work has gained any visibility in the movement. I believe Doctor Nerve is little known, yet I sense they've left some mark.

But let's get to the content: I would identify the salient feature of Doctor Nerve's proposal as the fact that the rhythmic base, with its marked robustness and physicality, compensates for the cerebral side of the intricate wind solutions that are said to be atonal. It's the bass, often playing slapped, that's mainly to blame. The leader's guitar, on the other hand, sometimes proceeds in the middle to bring everyone to agreement and sometimes stays silent. It's not easy to describe the compositions, so for this purpose, I will use this simplification: take Zappa, intoxicate him until he stumbles, gag him to keep him quiet, and filter him from analog to digital, in other words, crooked compositions, instrumental, played with a certain coldness, a certain detachment. To get a better idea here, you can watch and listen to some pieces contained in the CD.

Now comes the fun part. The cover is not in typical avant-rock style, also because one doesn't exist, and it reveals the mystery of Doctor Nerve; the computer.

Didkovsky, indeed, is a computer programmer and developed a contraption called Java Music Specification Language (JMSL), about which I remain silent due to ignorance and let him speak about.

This system for creating compositions based on algorithms is the soul of Doctor Nerve, which is nothing more than an ensemble wanted by Didkovsky to perform such compositions.

Then everything changes. Avant-rock? Frank Zappa? Should these be considered electronic compositions? Could it be that we can call it digital music for a human septet?

The concept of electronic music is reversed; it's not the man who plays the machine, it's the machine that composes for the man, who then has the job of choosing, arranging, and playing, which nevertheless cannot be considered secondary operations. This is how Doctor Nerve's creative process works, as Nick Didkovsky himself describes in a simple and complete way.

The creative process is very interesting but it's not a fundamental prerequisite for enjoying their proposal, like in certain more conceptual works. Enjoying their music without preconceptions becomes a pleasant, or at least curious, listening experience as it has been in my case for a long time.

5 stars, let generosity abound!