Structured improvisation that takes North Indian ragas as its model and uses the—currently very hip again—just intonation on piano: what the trio Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison & John Also Bennett have taken as their starting point for these eight pieces sounds pretty wild at first, all the more so because the former hardly appears as a performer and accompanied Harrison on the piano and Also Bennett on the modular synthesiser rather as a field recording supplier and, according to the accompanying note, »observer«. The music itself, however, is anything but enigmatic. Harrison’s quiet playing, despite the supposed discords—just intonation can be received by Western-conditioned ears as quirky—is wonderfully relaxed even at elevated speeds, and is contextualised by Also Bennett with subdued drones. At times this is reminiscent of the meandering improvisations of The Necks, had the group boiled their ingredients down to their essentials, then again, of course, of New Age music inspired by classical Indian music—three of the tracks are reinterpretations of traditional ragas. The artist responsible for the artwork, Parul Gupta, aptly speaks of this music as an »extension of silence«. The world stands still when it starts flowing.
Christina Vantzou
No.2
Kranky