The Wet Ink Ensemble, founded in 1998, describes itself as a “new music collective,” an apt label given the many roles these highly active New York–based musicians fulfill. Within this context it is not surprising that the five composers represented on the disc are also performing members of the ensemble. Indeed the label on which it was released, Carrier Records, was founded by two of them, Jeff Snyder and Sam Pluta. There are many intertwining tendrils here; clearly this is a group of young composers and performers invested in building a scene from the ground up, sharing a concern for the many layers that constitute the creation and dissemination of new music. The high quality of the compositions and the excellent performances on this disc attest to their success.
Composed between 2005 and 2007, the five pieces make for a surprisingly unified collection given the diversity of surface affect. As the tracks progress a number of themes unfold, resulting in a listening experience that provides both challenges and rewards. Reduced means, modular construction, an unorthodox approach to development—these descriptions apply to each work though the particular manifestations vary dramatically. A bare minimum of information is provided on the CD case, which consists of a cardstock foldout. The listed instrumentation of the ensemble includes flute, clarinet, saxophone, piano/accordion, percussion, electric guitar, voice, violin, cello, electronics, and conductor. Specific performers and instruments are tied to track numbers and a few other credits are offered, but in keeping with the reductive aesthetic, program notes are absent. The art on the front and back covers—computer-generated graphic representations of two of the compositions—is both attractive and well suited to the overall aesthetic.
In none of the pieces is the use of modular construction more striking than in the first, Alex Mincek's To Nowhere From Nowhere. His approach to repetition within these concise modules gives the piece a distinct and immediately arresting character. Such repetition also has an interesting effect on memory—the emergent riffs threaten to get stuck in one's head. The fluctuating density of the repeating modules provides structure as the piece unfolds, though the development is largely episodic rather than linear. The end, which includes an extended double glissando between saxophone and strings, deviates from this pattern, managing to endure past its momentary function. This deviation provides a welcome contrast and serves to wind down a potentially un-endable work. Overall the piece is surprisingly melodic given the amount of fragmentation, the melodies often created through multi-instrument hocketing. Mincek's integration of voice into this texture, handled most capably by ensemble member and composer Kate Soper, is particularly striking. Although this is minimal music, it's not minimalism. A more apt comparison might be with Beat Furrer, an Austrian composer with a startlingly unpredictable approach to repetition, especially in his works of the last decade. Mincek's piece, however, dwells in a much more obsessive and fractured realm, decidedly rooted in the United States, with a somewhat subtler use of extended techniques. In fact in the few places heavy bow pressure is called for on the strings to add a bit of noise, it tends to sound out of place. The performance, utilizing nearly the full ensemble, is clear and well balanced and the interlocking rhythms precise, all of which contributes to the transparency the piece so requires.
Shiverer, by Eric Wubbels, opens with a short, quickly repeated sonic unit reminiscent of Mincek's piece in its riff-like nature and apparent declaration of non-development, though the instrumentation is reduced to flute and piano. The similarities soon fade as the trajectory of the piece clarifies and the material does in fact begin to develop quite interestingly. What began as a statically morphing phrase breaks apart and intensifies, eventually relaxing into another zone of static repetition. The presence of such tension-and-release cycles is repeated throughout, lending a strong sense of forward motion that abruptly evaporates at the end of each large-scale section. On several occasions this evaporation feels too decisive, disrupting the momentum almost beyond recovery and threatening a premature conclusion. One gets the sense that the music is searching, drifting through material only to become trapped in an obsessively repetitive loop, in at least one case drilling down to a repeated single pitch, before collapsing in exhaustion, only to begin again. The recording quality of this track is a bit dark, perhaps the result of live tracking, though this doesn't detract from the crisp, lively interaction between the two musicians.
Sam Pluta's American Tokyo Daydream IV (data structures/monoliths), for saxophone, accordion, and electric guitar, is jarring in its sudden abrasiveness, especially following the previous two works. Although this abrasiveness threatens to detach it from the other tracks, its modular organization and intriguing use of repetition bridge the divide. Again we are confronted with an extremely fragmented progression of short units, which in this case cycle back in a complex pattern, sometimes varied, often verbatim. The jagged angularity and abrupt, constantly shifting character are reminiscent of John Zorn, or perhaps more appropriately of noisy Japanese math rock outfits such as Ruins. Certainly linear development is turned on its ear—it may be occurring in some strange way, but it's a frantic development just as likely to jerk forward as backward. This angularity combined with the harsh timbres makes the piece both challenging and a great deal of fun. The recording quality places the instruments directly in the listener's ear, creating an intensely claustrophobic environment. Although this virtual proximity certainly emphasizes the above-described qualities, I question the use of such techniques on a disc of otherwise inconspicuously recorded pieces. The long ending sequence is particularly engaging: fully one third of the piece is devoted to a grindingly sustained chordal drone in all three instruments, the guitar swerving drunkenly within its confines. It is an abrasively gorgeous sustained moment of staticity in an otherwise highly volatile landscape. Throughout the performance, the players handle the perpetually simultaneous attacks with a great deal of accuracy in what must be a taxing piece to perform.
The most striking thing about Traceries, by Jeff Snyder, is its restrained dynamic and judicious use of silence, despite incorporating the entire ensemble less saxophone and voice. Snyder offers calm after the storm that was Pluta's piece, and it's a beautiful calm that turns out to be less than serene. The language is spare, though not without its moments of surprise. Brief semi-melodic blooms, often emphasizing sevenths and open octaves, characterize the first half, whereas in the second half the dyad is predominant, lending the piece an increasingly restrained character. The second half especially is reminiscent of Morton Feldman, though the harmonic language and a sprinkling of sudden attacks belie the comparison. Again there is a sense of modularity, the modules clearly demarcated by pauses. This piece is the only one on the disc with electronics, though they are quite subtle and confined to the background. In fact, a lone reverb crash near the middle calls into question its intentionality. Much like Feldman's fully notated pieces, Traceries does not sound technically challenging to perform, a clear testament to the skill and focus with which it is rendered.
Within its first few measures, Kate Soper's Door reveals an uncharacteristic linear motion for this collection, though this flow is ameliorated by its division into movements as short as 37 seconds. Rather than focusing on the temporal juxtaposition of unified modular entities, this piece is concerned with the interaction among autonomous instruments. Most pronounced in the first movement, events often cause and terminate each other, resulting a fluid dialog between constituents. The role of the voice varies, sometimes dominant, sometimes placed on an equal level with the other instruments through the use of counterpoint or the creation of a composite texture. It is a difficult vocal part and Soper's intonation sounds unsure in the second movement, perhaps due to a somewhat awkward melody. The third movement, on the other hand, is handled nicely. It is an engaging section, characterized by lines that accrete rather than flow forward.
Overall, this disc provides an exciting perspective on the explorations of an interesting group of composers and performers. The coherence of the disc, despite its breadth of styles, speaks to the strength of the underlying ideas. Without ascribing to a postmodern aesthetic, these pieces exemplify a number of successful solutions to a common problem of the postmodern era, namely that of the development of musical material over time. They also exemplify a resurgence of interest in a reductive aesthetic, one that has little to do with “minimalism” as the term is commonly understood. Whereas a European influence is certainly present, this collection of pieces bears more strongly the mark of its country of origin. The performances are excellent; this is clearly a group of musicians who approach the material at hand with a great deal of dedication. It will be interesting to see where this ensemble, the composers, and the label associated with them, Carrier Records, take this project in the future.
