Zachary Paul: A Meditation on Discord
Touch
A Meditation on Discord isn't the first recording Zachary Paul's released—the LA-based violinist has issued three albums under the Poppy Nogood alias and appeared on releases by Simon Scott, Sean McCann, and others—though it is his first on Touch. It's also powerful, the incredible opening piece in particular, and very much a solo recording, its three single-movement settings birthed by Paul alone using violin and electronics. His bio identifies interests in long durations, trance states, and the tension between stasis and movement, all of which are borne out by the fifty-five-minute release (a 500-CD edition). That bio also draws a connecting line from Paul's explorations to those of Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, and La Monte Young, and again the connection's very much supported by the material.
The opening two pieces are live, fully improvised recordings performed on his 1878 violin and augmented by pedals (Earthquaker Afterneath, Diamond Memory Lane Jr, Boss RC-30) and looped vocals. It's the thirty-two-minute Premonition, recorded on Oct 12th, 2018 on the first day of the Desert Daze music festival, that is clearly the recording's central work. Having tuned his violin in open G (G-D-G-D), Paul began, his improvisation reflecting the vibrations of the sun as he absorbed the scene around him. By his own reckoning, the moment he locked into these higher frequencies, “the instrument took control and painted the evening.” Though two parts are identified (“Rays” and “Clouds”), Premonition unfolds without pause as an immense, sprawling colossus. With layers multiplied into a towering mass, a mesmerizing swarm is generated whereby bowed strings of dramatically contrasting pitches swirl, shudder, and wail. The impact of the material when listened to at peak volume is stunning, as well as a little bit disorienting—the kind of staggering creation that can leave a performer wondering if such a moment can ever be duplicated. There are moments here where the mass ascends with such ferocity, it feels like your head's about to be torn off, and those who witnessed the performance at the festival must have been in a state of total stupefaction by the time it reached its cataclysmic conclusion. Imagine layering Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack to The Birds a hundred times over and you'll have some hint as to its colossal sound.
The other pieces can't help but be overshadowed by the opener, but they're still very much worth hearing. Recorded eight months earlier at Human Resources in LA for an event celebrating the release of Yann Novak's second Touch album, Slow Ascent (9:30PM Downtown) found Paul playing before his biggest audience to date. Though he was by his own admission nervous (the anxiety manifesting itself as physical tremors in his arm that are heard in the jagged bow stroke at the start of the piece), he turned that to his advantage by feeding off the audience's energy, and the comfort level he gradually achieved is discernible in the patience and control administered during the twelve-minute performance. Even softer (at least initially) is the final piece, A Person with Feelings, which isn't a live performance but instead a score Paul created for a short abstract film by Tanner Smith to be released in 2019. Pitched at a hush, the material wends its melancholy way for five minutes, Paul again showing himself to be an expert at sustaining flow and weaving texture, until a turn into quasi-industrial noise explorations is undertaken for its nightmarish second half. Largely meditative by design, these closing pieces are less intense than Premonition, though not objectionably so. It's unquestionably the magnificent latter work, however, that is the recording's major achievement.April 2019