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A New York Minute

by Alan Licht
XI Records, New York, 2003
2 Audio-CDs, 2 Hrs, 3 mi., 15 secs; XI #128, $13.00
http://www.experimentalintermedia.org/xi/128.shtml.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

If you are listening closely, a New York minute lasts for more than two hours. Is this the conundrum that plays a pivotal role in Alan Licht’s most recent release? Oops, I give away some of the main influences behind this music already. Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band are not very far away, and time is of the essence in this auditory analysis of time. Of course, music is the art form dealing with time par excellence——and even Pergolesi and Brueckner have been struggling with it in their own right——but in Alan Licht’s hands, sound and time are morphed one into the other, mutually measuring each other and setting the framework for the awareness and concentration the listener involuntarily and of necessity develops.

The title track consists of compiled, multi-tracked weather-reports from everyday in January 2001 in the great city. Reminiscent of the America-compilations of Ferdinand Kriwet of the late 60's, they still have some freshness and originality to them, if only because they deal with the general and the abstract through the anecdotal. After all, the weather is there, whatever the time. (In French both time and the weather are indicated by the same word: le temps). Anyway, this track announces what follows: Five lengthy pieces where repetition and not quite similarity are the essential ingredients for a musical experience of the highest quality. Intellectually brave and technically brilliant, each separate composition exemplifies how a musician can get the most results out of the merest of materials and must never resort to pathetic gestures or spectacular and climactic moves to catch the most intangible aspect of consciousness.

According to Kenneth Goldsmith who wrote one of two introductory texts in the accompanying booklet,

"Alan Licht has been a curator of music as well as a tireless performer. While his earlier recordings have seamlessly melded his improvisational guitar playing with extended plundered sounds, this record takes things a few steps further. Instead of fusing the many sides of Licht into one monolithic mega-mix, this disc separates them into discreet compositions. The guitar pieces are showcases as guitar pieces and the plundered works are just that."

And Jutta Koether adds:

"There are quite a few distortions of time and space happening in and between those tracks, but it is also about a wise and interesting use of a stimulant, about balancing, experimenting with the dosage of the guiter [or organ, or sample] drone. Playful de-virtuosities. Making and unmaking of the moment. And that's how one's body might relate to that. How everything in New York can be the most precious thing or precious moment and then nothing-thing or nothing-moment in an instant and then again. Alan Licht's music works right with this ongoing stream of contradictions."

Whatever the superlatives, what we have here is a set of five improvisations-compositions that are grounded in a respectable tradition of conceptual music, treading in the footsteps of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, but also in those of Pauline Oliveros, Michael Snow, and Martin Rev. There are other——European——influences as well, but the end result is identifiably and utterly East Coast American, including all the exuberant celebration of emptiness and moral ennui. In the beginning, there was nothing, in the end, there will be music——and it might as well be Alan Licht's.

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Updated 1st September 2004


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