K. Leimer: Useless Epitomes
Palace of Lights
Kerry Leimer's The Useless Lesson and Lesser Epitomes sound as lustrous today as they did upon their first release in 2008; if anything, they sound better. But that's as it should be, given that the original material has been remixed (by Leimer) and remastered (by Taylor Deupree) for this double-CD reissue, which includes in its digital form a forty-minute bonus EP titled Three Adaptations (not included on the physical release, the format reviewed here).
Written and recorded between 2006 and 2007, The Useless Lesson, characterized by Leimer as “a first effort with using solely sample-based instruments,” remains as stirring today as it was when first heard eleven years ago. In the original textura review, the comparison drawn between its opening setting “To force closed our eyes” and Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 (aka Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) still holds: the string patterns that intone ever so gently through this plangent construction lend it an arresting sadness that helps distinguish the piece as one of Leimer's most beautiful creations (in its similar strings-heavy presentation, “Declension of need” nearly equals it, the major difference between them the presence of bell chimes in the closer). The pieces that follow, however, aren't mere variations on that opening theme but instead go down different paths. “Failing need of more,” the ethereal, fourteen-minute soundscape that follows, largely eschews strings for nebulous haze, the impression created of a massive, slow-moving cloud formation at the center of which traces of electrical activity can be detected. In contrast to the equally serene and haunting ambient stylings of “After Dowland,” “Anosognosia” sounds especially aggressive when electric guitar-like distortion bleeds from the arrangement. Little of it sounds dated, notwithstanding drumming in the latter that calls to mind crude electronic drum sounds from the ‘80s, and it's also worth noting that titles such as The Useless Lesson and “Music that conceives of itself as music” reveal an irreverent side to Leimer that's refreshing in a genre whose practitioners sometimes take themselves a tad too seriously.
An entirely different animal is Lesser Epitomes, which its creator accurately describes as “process music for active or passive listening.” Three suites are presented, with five parts in “Nonadaptive Layers,” nine, obviously, in “Nine Approximations,” and seven in “Naïve Music”; the third set differentiates itself from the other two by threading real-world details recorded in London, Paris, Florence, and Maui (tolling bells, for example, in the set's third) into the sound design. An aleatoric dimension informs the material, with Leimer using chance to determine the basic shape of the material and the listener encouraged to randomly reshuffle the tracks' order during playback. The short pieces in “Nonadaptive Layers” feature vibrato-heavy strings and woodwinds intertwining and alternating in elegant, dance-like formations; with dramatic narrative arcs rejected in favour of even-keeled unfolding, the material imparts a calming quality that would conceivably make it an effective complement to meditation sessions and/or gallery installations. Stated otherwise, pitched at a modest volume, one could imagine its murmuring tones unspooling on repeat for hours on end as a subliminal enhancement to all kinds of contexts and activities. Regardless, some of these rather baroque-like reveries are disarmingly lovely, the second one in “Nine Approximations” a perfect illustration in the way its oboes (whether electronically simulated or not) gracefully interweave and the fourth's oboe-and-strings coupling not far behind. Though the material on each CD is markedly different from the other in character, this Leimer material holds up magnificently well more than a decade removed from its original release.March 2019