Architek Percussion: Six Changes
Architek Percussion

Steven Schick: Weather Systems I – A Hard Rain
Islandia Music Records

Anyone who thinks one percussion album's the same as the next need only look to this recent trio of recordings to be convinced otherwise. On the one hand, we have Third Coast Percussion and Architek Percussion, ensembles whose music's grounded in the kind of rhythmic propulsion we would expect from groups so constituted; on the other, there's Steven Schick, who performs some of the most seminal works created for solo percussion on his invaluable release, the first in a projected series.

As a title, Six Changes might suggest a Steve Reich homage, but the latest recording from the Montreal-based quartet Architek Percussion could pass for a Tortoise homage, if anything. In fact, with the renowned Chicago group more focused on solo recordings and side-projects these days than a new group release, the set by Architek members Noam Bierstone, Ben Duinker, Alexander Haupt, and Alessandro Valiante offers an appealing alternative to Tortoise fans. Let's be clear, however: while the vibraphone-and-drum kit emphasis of Six Changes invites the comparison, Architek has written its own adventurous script since its 2012 founding by McGill University graduates. In addition to multiple cross-Canada tours, the quartet has commissioned and/or premiered over fifty works by composers from around the world. Instead of an album featuring pieces by different composers, however, Architek's third full-length presents a six-part composition written collaboratively by Duinker and his bandmates, with former member Ben Reimer appearing alongside Bierstone and Valiante (Haupt joined Architek after the recording). Imagine some vibrant hybrid of American minimalism and post-rock—Steve Reich and Four Tet jamming with a Jeff Parker-free Tortoise, perhaps—and you're on the right track.

The soundworld of Six Changes declares itself quickly. As gleaming vibraphones tinkle and electronic textures swirl in the opening “When Will I Realize?,” a heavy drum groove and bass synth line establish a rock-hard foundation (without wishing to push the Tortoise idea too far, the drumming here hits with the same kind of force as John Herndon's). Rhythm's of course fundamental to Architek's attack, but melody's key too, and to that end the group uses mallet instruments and keyboards. The dense, polyrhythmic cross-patterns the four weave into the tracks, especially when coupled with intricate yet infectious drum grooves, makes for stimulating listening. Changing things up, “Your Definition of Home is Dependent on the Constants in Your Life” grounds its flurries of vibraphones, synthesizer, and organ with a driving, African-inflected pulse and muscular kit drumming. The album culminates in epic fashion with “Dark Horse Fan,” a climactic slow-builder replete with grandiose synthesizer flourishes and a strong percussive attack. In contrast to the releases by Schick and Third Coast Percussion, Architek's plays like a single, long-form composition, with its bloat-free, thirty-three-minute running time making the music on the release feel even breezier.

The performances on Perspectives by Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion (Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore) are dynamic, but it's the programme that recommends the recording most. While the group's re-imagining of Philip Glass's solo piano setting Metamorphosis No. 1 is memorable, the other works are powerful too. Danny Elfman engages with his four-movement Percussion Quartet, flute duo Flutronix collaborates with the Chicago-based quartet for the three-movement Rubix, and electronic musician and composer Jlin (Jerrilynn Patton) adds a funky dance music dimension to the album through her seven-part Perspective. The four works speak to Third Coast Percussion's open-minded sensibility and the daring with which it's expanding the percussion repertoire. Adding to the project's appeal, all are world premiere recordings.

Though some might identify Elfman as the one-time frontman for Oingo Boingo, even more recognize him now for his work as the composer of film soundtracks for Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and others. In titling his piece Percussion Quartet and its parts “Movement 1,” “Movement 2,” and so on, Elfman eschews programmatic reference, the composer seemingly content to focus exclusively on exploring the rhythmic possibilities a percussion work affords. He also draws upon an adventurous personal background, including a self-guided tour across Africa to absorb a diversity of musical traditions, for material that stretches from American minimalism to Indonesian Gamelan. Much like a classical string quartet work or symphony, the parts exemplify contrasting characters and moods, with two effervescent movements framing serene and gamelan-heavy episodes. Sensitivity to timbre is shown in Elfman's arrangement, and joy and the thrill of group interaction are palpably felt in the quartet's virtuosic execution.

Third Coast Percussion amplifies the haunting character of Glass's Metamorphosis No. 1 in an arrangement that vividly exploits the abundant contrasts offered by marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, and melodica. The group's credited as co-composer with Flutronix (Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull) for Rubix, their collaboration rooted in a playful “game piece” approach that involves each party contributing material that's then collectively refined into a final, through-composed form. The three movements definitely reflect that collaborative process in featuring flute and percussion equally, be it during the exuberant “Go,” sparkling “Play” (with its early Glass-like patterns), or dreamy reverie “Still.”

Of the four works, it's Jlin's that hits hardest. The approach she adopted for its creation is in itself interesting: after preliminary groundwork that involved sampling the group's percussion arsenal, Patton created each movement as an electronic track, the results of which the quartet then turned into a half-hour version it could deliver live. Her background in footwork and other dance club styles permeates Perspective in the force and insistence of its thrust and the earthy funkiness of its percolating polyrhythms. Your ears are sure to perk up when the junkyard percussive techno-funk of “Derivative” and “Embryo” roll out, and certainly no other work on the album equals Perspective as a body-mover.

At the extreme other end of the percussion spectrum lies Steven Schick's A Hard Rain, the first chapter in a projected multi-album series titled Weather Systems. Issued on Maya Beiser's Islandia Music Records, the double-disc set eschews the propulsion of the Third Coast and Architek releases for explorative solo performances of foundational pieces by John Cage, Charles Wuorinen, Helmut Lachenmann, and others that unfold with great deliberation and purpose. These are works that engage for the radical character of their sound worlds, not for the infectious urgency of their rhythms.

If anyone's qualified to take on such a project of such scope, it's Schick. Like Beiser a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, he's commissioned or premiered more than 150 new works, some of which have become staples of the solo percussion repertoire. He was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2014 and holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego (where A Hard Rain was recorded). Among the recordings he's released are ones featuring works by Xenakis and Stockhausen, and Schick also authored the book The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams.

The idea for A Hard Rain crystallized during the pandemic when Schick's focus shifted from public performance to private practice and in doing so revisiting the foundational works presented on the release; in his own words, “Perhaps the exactitude of practicing was a necessary antidote to the chaos of the historical moment.” Aspects of the material—the way they lend themselves to contemplation, introspection, and exploration, for example—dovetailed with the lockdown period and the kind of probing inner reflection it encouraged. As some pieces are ones he's played for a half-century, his engagement with the material plays like a life story in sound.

Characteristic of the release is Cage's 27'10.554” for a percussionist (1956), accurately described by Schick as “a rainforest of sounds: of water, earth, and air; of rip-sawn wood and ancient metal.” Those sounds appear as a flowing, ever-changing stream that's never less than fascinating; it's also, however, unhurried in its unfolding, with lengthy pauses sometimes separating bursts of activity. As mentioned, the feeling is one of contemplative, circumspect exploration, and consistent with that listening must attune itself to the slow-motion pace for a genuine appreciation of Schick's project to result. Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus (1959) incorporates vibraphone, marimba, cymbals, gongs, bells, tom-toms, snare, hi-hat, güiro, and others into its eleven-minute evocation. True to its title, the work weaves five distinct layers of cycles into its structure, even if the work's structural design isn't the first thing the listener pulled into its ever-evolving sound world notices.

For a number of reasons, Schick regards Morton Feldman's The King of Denmark (1964) as the epicentre of the album. First of all, the performer acts as a co-composer in being allowed to choose the instruments for a performance, and pitches and rhythms are largely determined by the percussionist too. Schick first learned the score in 1979 and has created at least twenty versions of the piece, none, however, recorded until now. What makes this version especially interesting is how much it's been personalized by him. Quotations from Rothko Chapel and For Philip Guston have been included, and musical references to friends, family, and colleagues appear also, Beiser, John Luther Adams, and Barry Lopez among them.

Following William Hibbard's Parsons' Piece (1968), a transfixing constellation of gongs, cymbals, cowbells, and bass drums, A Hard Rain features an audacious, half-hour realization of Kurt Schwitters' Ursonata (1922-32), described by the composer himself as a “sonata in primal sounds.” For this recording, Schick used interactive technology designed and performed by electronics composer Shakrokh Yadegari. A century removed from its creative inception, the work's linguistic wordplay and vocal pops and flurries still tickle the ears. It also parts company from the other six pieces in featuring voice and electronics in place of standard percussion instruments.

July 2022