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Rating: Rhys Chatham or "Of minimalism, guitar, noise".
Minimalism is an artistic movement that has expanded across every discipline since the mid-last century: its aim is the valorization of the environment, using various and different means. In music, this neo-avant-garde takes on a psychotropic aspect: compositions with a strong immanent aspect based on the reiteration of a formula that evolves progressively and almost imperceptibly; a methodology that even today influences and is the basis for many scenes, very different from each other. The pioneer of musical minimalism is LaMonte Young, while the artist who most popularized it is Terry Riley.
Less famous is Rhys Chatham: a brilliant mind who tried to merge the scansions and procedures of this avant-garde with rock.
Rhys Chatham was a student of LaMonte Young and his instrument was the flute, but in the New York of Television and Ramones, he was struck by rock and its principal voice: the guitar. It then dawned on him the amazing idea of applying the canons of minimalism to the sound of that era: specifically to what is usually defined as noise or no-wave.
Kudos to Table Of Elements, an always avant-garde label, that allows new generations to discover the work and thought of this sonic minstrel: during the summer of 2006, they reissued his most important works. Die Donnergoetter (never was a title more fitting) is a retrospective covering the period between 1977 (not just any year) and 1986 and it gathers compositions that well summarize the music of our artist and his divide between the passion for the guitar and that for brass instruments. In both cases, the result is astonishing.
As for the pieces dedicated to the six-string, we find Guitar Trio ('77), Drastic Classicism ('86), and Die Donnergoetter ('85/'86) and we immediately understand the reasons why Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth define Rhys as a mentor. The first piece is the one with which Chatham debuted on the stages of the coolest New York venues (the CBGBs to name one, and what a name), often accompanied indeed by Glenn Branca or Lee Ranaldo or Thurston Moore: three guitars, a bass, and drums build through an eternal climax an apocalyptic and jaw-breaking symphony endowed with an interminable and rocky groove; the ascents and descents drawn by the guitars, the state of euphoric impatience created by the rhythm section leave absolutely no escape and suddenly end leaving the listener almost in a state of trance. Drastic Classicism is an apology of chaos, but it is an extremely orderly and rigorous chaos in its explosion and almost reaching cacophony: it is perhaps the craziest and most exemplary antecedent of what Sonic Youth will consecrate to the general public, besides being clearly a consistent platform (having also served as the musical base for many performances of the Cunningham Dance Company). The suite giving the album its title is perhaps the most precious track of the batch, its summit summary at the highest degree of significance and impact: over twenty-one minutes in which six guitars chase and challenge each other, compact into almost hard-rock geometries and seem about to detonate... but no, then they grow and grow under the attentive beats of the bass and drums that do not give even a moment of rest to the six strings. An unrelenting and mammoth ride, a sonic and democratic assault to the light, a joyous Dionysian march, the Macedonian phalanx caught in the climax of a clash and transformed into music.
Also carrying a highly aggressive style are the tracks dedicated to brass instruments: Waterloo No.2 was born to accompany a choreography by the French Yves Musard and sounds like a military band dedicated to minimalist geometries; Massacre On McDougal Street was also born for a dance show, this time by Karole Armitage, and pairs in beauty with the aforementioned Die Donnergoetter. It is a composition for four trumpets, three trombones, a tuba and the drums: all the distressing and paranoid tendencies of Rhys's music here meld together following the minimalist dynamic, thus creating a stunning and dark thriller fresco, truly worthy of being chosen as the soundtrack for the hypothetical result of an imaginary collaboration (grotesque and uneasy, violent and dramatic) between the minds of Alfred Hitchcock and Alan Moore.
This CD contains exceptionally juicy and highly refined and important content: a precious piece for all those who are passionate about music (which was at risk of being forgotten), the unmissable description of a unique moment where avant-garde and raw underground were the same fantastic music.
MASTERPIECE.
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