Robert Wyatt
The End Of An Ear

It's possible to rationally analyze madness: it's child's play.

"The End of an Ear" from 1970 is the first solo album by Robert Wyatt. The basic idea of the album is quickly summed up: to try to study, describe, and finally praise the dark side of man: his irrational part. The author seeks to express, through music and noise, a confused vision of reality. Artistically, the theme is treated with a Dadaist approach. It is a daring choice, but fitting for the intended purpose; probably the best way to describe madness, without disastrously falling into the abyss of incomprehension, is through the distorted and childish vision of reality that a child can have: the only human being capable of eluding it and mocking it.

Stylistically, it's an album in which the typical characteristics of free-jazz find fertile ground and develop on the foundations of psychedelic rock. Wyatt remains famous for being one of the greatest musicians that the Canterbury scene can boast; speaking of Canterbury, it is difficult not to remember how this style is related to a fusion of jazz and rock. Despite everything, "The End of an Ear" proposes a musical style that draws only from the author's musical background, who chose to open the doors to improvisations much less calculated and much more raw, to the point that, at first listen, one might mistakenly think of the album as 40 minutes of rational free-jazz improvisation; as if it were a very little "free" free-jazz. Instead, the improvisations are indeed based on the idea of freedom of expression, but are executed in a psychedelic key. In conclusion, there is a strong noise element, sometimes exaggerated and inappropriate, that gives even more the idea of a completely unharmonious sound chaos, a magma bubbling in the depths of the soul. After all, let's not forget that Wyatt tries to express the abysses of the irrational part of the human mind in music.

On Las Vegas Tago Part 1 (Repeat) (eight minutes) the cosmic void that Wyatt manages to create between himself and the listener is absurd: absurd because it is incredible how he manages to make a track, characterized by a well-defined and rigorous rhythmic structure, seem so irrational and unattainable. Piano and voices chase each other drawing improbable harmonic geometries; these are accompanied by cosmic sounds created by a synth. Childish and absolutely illogical voices break into the landscape drawn by the instruments that accompany a voice that despairs in space, as if they could understand and respond to a hallucinatory cosmic cry; the child mocking the desperate. On a strictly stylistic level, it is a crescendo of improvisations that rests on a well-defined base. It makes no sense to look for the motivations behind the musicians' harmonic choices; rather, it makes much more sense to close your eyes and lose yourself in the immensity of the cosmos (the madness of man). The drums are the only anchor to reality, what keeps the listener grounded: keyboards and voices have nothing rational, they are simply elegies to "ordered" disorder. The most shocking thing about the track is that it is actually a well-designed and defined work: nothing to do with the chronic disorder that might appear at first listen. The rhythms, as irrational as they are, erect a stable and lasting structure: a starting point that makes the "uncontrolled" voices sure of themselves, ready to draw daring and imaginative geometries through an ocean of dissonances and noises. Wyatt managed to rationalize madness by expressing it in a "manneristically" Dadaist key.

To Mark Everywhere is a wind instrument solo over a barely hinted march from the drums, accompanied by a restless bass. It is an even relaxing track, compared to what has been heard so far. Very short, absolutely hermetic, incredibly shocking. At the end of the track, a heart-wrenching spatial voice mocks the listener.

To Saintly Bridget is a pure free-jazz track. Wind instruments and keyboards hint at a theme that never begins, accompanied by a very "straight" bass and drums. It feels like watching a volcano's magma a second before it erupts. The event told by the track could be that of "A Day in the Life of a Fool": as if a madman (the winds) was walking in the center of a city, surrounded by normal people (bass and drums) who peacefully live their lives.

To Oz Alien Daevyd and Gilly is the natural continuation of the previous track. I consider the two tracks as united, because the logical thread followed by the instruments is the same: as if the aforementioned people realize the madman wandering among them and become alarmed. The rhythm section, improvising impossible rhythms, performs an irrational solo that accompanies the evolutions performed by the winds. It's a phenomenal track, like a long and complex stream of consciousness. At the end of the track, it becomes clear that the "madman" does not exist: it is the perception of others that defines a person as mad. So one must ask whether the mad ones are the musicians or us who try to listen to them.

To Nick Everyone is the second long track of the album (nine minutes). It begins as a back-and-forth between winds and drums, where the stakes are the listener's attention. And then here is a drum solo accompanied by shouts from winds, bass, and piano, responding to it in the few moments of lucidity they are granted. An overlapping of unreal and improbable voices, trying to paint a melody where they are not given the certainty of the presence of a sheet on which to paint. Wyatt's greatness is in making formally very difficult rhythmic phrases appear inconsistent, as if he renounces the title of "musician" to best express his idea of a distorted perception of reality. An absolutely irrational sound magma: is there perhaps a better way to praise madness?

To Caravan and Brother Jim is a far more cadenced and structured track than the previous ones. An abulic drum accompanies relaxing, almost ecclesiastical harmonies. There are always small and fleeting wind interventions that disconnect from reality, but compared to the previous tracks, we are on a non-unstable foothold. Progressively, the instruments draw strange landscapes, rationally distancing us from reality. The track ends with small rhythmic experiments from the drums. A choral free-jazz noise experiment: this is the most normal track of "The End of an Ear".

To the Old World (Thank You for the Use of Your Body, Goodbye) is introduced by winds imitating in a Dadaist key improbable noises. It seems to be a sound experiment where the various musicians' knowledge of how to create absurd sounds with their instruments is flaunted. Wah-wah, reverb, pitch-shifting, tone modulation: these are the means by which to thank the "old world".

To Carla, Marsha and Caroline (For Making Everything Beautifuller) is a sweet symphony for piano, organ, and background noises. It feels like attending a small theatrical piece. It's the sweetest track on the album. Noteworthy is the absence of drums and bass: it seems that the madman playing the piano does not need a solid base to lean on to describe affection.

Las Vegas Tango Part 1 essentially resumes the structure of the first track of the album. A climax of piano harmonies, whistles, and winds generates a vortex out of nothing that subtracts us from reality and violently throws us inside ourselves. The transition from reality to fantasy is marked by the usual aleatory voices that have accompanied the listener up to this point in the album. A very sweet synth accompanies the mad ones who intervene to ruin the harmony. The underlying sense of the track is a slow approach to the apocalypse. Among the distorted voices that intervene in the track, it seems even possible to distinguish some words of actual meaning! Despite everything, as much as it involves sound experiments that describe chaos, it is astonishing how cold and calculating the voice is that, sobbing, acts as a drum (in sharp contrast with the one that will accompany Alifib four years later on Rock Bottom). The track ends abruptly, just when one gets accustomed to the idea of leaving reality to understand what is happening.

Probably it turned out exactly the album that Wyatt wanted to make: an hermetic album, where it is easy to divert one's attention from the linearity that (paradoxically) distinguishes the work. In reality, every choice, both harmonic and structural, is well-defined and rationalizable, although, at first listen to "The End of an Ear", the remaining impression is of a group of drugged individuals who, without any competence in the matter, are trying to compose music. The basic idea is undoubtedly captivating and tackled in an innovative manner, but the album's big flaw is its inaccessibility: it would have been better to pay more attention to the musical part to make a conceptually and stylistically very interesting work more accessible to the general public.

An unpredictable album, difficult to listen to, terribly boring if one stops at appearances, astonishing if one concentrates on the abyssal depth of chaos.