Tom Challenger & Kit Downes Black Shuck, Yarn/Wire Currents Vol. 4
Tom Challenger & Kit Downes
Black Shuck
(Slip)
In British folklore, “black shuck” is a monstrous black ghost dog with flaming eyes that wanders the coasts, graveyards, forests and countrysides in the east part of England; if it crosses your path, it’s an ominous sign that death may not be far away.
It’s a fitting title for the latest release from the British duo of saxophonist Tom Challenger and keyboardist Kit Downes; with stretches of dark atmospherics and tense, foreboding rumbles, it aims to set a specific mood, unlike the duo’s earlier collaboration, Wedding Music, which sports a variety of approaches. Instead, Black Shuck expands upon the improvisational album Vyamanikal released earlier this year that was recorded in five different churches.
Black Shuck features two 10-minute-long tracks, with the first half featuring a seven-piece ensemble that includes mostly acoustic instrumentalists (Challenger, Downes, three string players and a percussionist) plus one player handling electronics. Paradoxically, the first track packs a lot into ten minutes while giving the impression of a glacial pace, with drones, sound-fogs and no jarring movements.
This writer favors the second track, which just features the duo and immediately presents a soft, thick cloud of background noise as a bed for Downes’ faint organ stirrings and judicious notes from Challenger. Sparse clatter and non-melodic noises reverberate as if the recording was done in a huge, empty warehouse, providing a bleak and unsettling soundtrack.
Toward the end of the track, there is a tiny glimmer of optimism, when the background noise drops out, leaving Challenger alone and exposed; not quite beaten down, he supplies a plaintive but somewhat jazzy melody, like an attempt to decorate a cinder-block wall with a postcard. But alas, the noise returns, like a mythical beast that lurks in dark and spooky corners of listeners’ imaginations.
Yarn/Wire
Currents Vol. 4
(yarnwire.bandcamp.com)
The Currents series from the quartet Yarn/Wire, formed by two percussionists and two pianists at Stony Brook University in 2005, spotlights adventurous pieces that were specifically commissioned for Yarn/Wire; these were written by both relatively young and more established composers with the ensemble’s instrumentation and abilities in mind.
The fourth installment from the group features a live concert recording made in September in Brooklyn, and the performance space is actually a vital component of the evening, as the sonic vibrations in the three pieces depend on the location’s acoustics.
Catherine Lamb is a composer who explores the interactions of tones, and her piece “curvo totalitas” uses a large metal square and circle to create a spellbinding drone. At one point, the piece sounds like an epic gong hit that is the aural equivalent of a tidal wave, and drama is created in the piece’s second half with a ramping volume.
In a recording studio, engineers isolate drum kits so that other instruments won’t make the snares on a snare drum vibrate, but on “Oases,” vibrating snares are the main sound source. “Oases” was composed by Alvin Lucier, best known for experimental (literal definition, rather than the off-center catch-all definition) works that are based on resonance such as “I am sitting in a room” and “Music on a Long Thin Wire”; a vibraphone is struck, supplying a slow pulse, which causes snare drums carried by the other three performers to vibrate as they alter their positions in the performance hall.
As much as this writer admires Lucier’s work, this particular piece perhaps suffers from being a recording rather than being heard live, when sound variations are likely more pronounced, with only an increased tempo at the very end being an engaging moment.
The album’s third track, “Distance / Absence” by Anthony Vine offers the most variation of the three pieces, centering on a detuned zither that’s plucked and strummed so that its sounds are beyond recognition, interacting with confounding piano chords mirrored with struck percussion.
An imagined narrative develops in the listener’s mind, with high-frequency sustained squeals leading to a complex stew of notes and ending with a serene, wispy resolution.