Numbers by Richard Barrett & Han-Earl Park

Recorded at the Institute of Sonology, The Hague, 10 March 2011.

REVIEWS

You can easily imagine an accountant, a computer expert or an operational researcher in the act of falling prey of frightening hallucinations after a session of intensive work on numerical models, impressive balance sheets or other number-covered screed and their colossal equations or string while getting turned into ominous entities which paralyze their own maker in order to obsess, harass and torture him till death while listening to this amazing and fuzzy release by Welsh electronic musician and performer Richard Barrett (some well-trained listeners could know his collaborative project FURT with Paul Obermayer as well as his work within the Elision Ensemble) and guitarist, improviser and very talented performer Han-Earl Park. By means of an intricate web of sonic hiccups, scrapes, scouring, gluts, gargles and cuts, they build an acoustic lucid computational delirium, whose trajectory is impossible to outguess. Track titles ("tolur", "tricav", "ankpla", "uettet", "creens", "11......" have been taken from the final section of the below-mentioned poem) but arguably its bizarre performative approach as well, have been inspired by same titled extended poem by defiant English poet Simon Howard, first published as a digital issue on Mark Cobley's blog The Red Ceilings and then on paper by The Knives Forks And Spoons Press. Vito Camarretta (Chain DLK)

March 2011, Institute of Sonology, The Hague: electronician Richard Barrett (of Furt) and guitarist Han-earl Park are working together to create music both spontaneous and premeditated, music that launches into several directions at a time (that’s Furt’s trademark). The guitar is wildly spatialized, and the electronics intermingle with it, manipulating in real-time, adding pointillistic fluries of sounds that make it impossible de isolate a single contribution. The result is lively, relevant, dizzying electroacoustic music; music that seems to be daring us to try and catch it. François Couture (Monsieur Délire)

The benevolent people trusting my beliefs know that I am quite fond of Richard Barrett’s work, developed across a wide orbit of settings (with particular emphasis on FURT – the time-tested duo with Paul Obermayer – and the collaboration with his equally awesome partner, vocalist Ute Wassermann). In this brilliantly garbled affair, on the other side of the stage sits a musician whose acoustic indicant was previously unknown here, if memory is not failing. Korean guitarist Han-Earl Park has worked with several names of the “intelligent noise” scene, not to mention his membership in the Mathilde 253 trio with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith. Having this chronicling wannabe done the necessary homework while remaining doomed to permanent ignorance, it is in any case impractical to verbally interpret the bazillions of events that this CD warrants, for the joy of individuals who take pleasure in getting their brain zapped and scrambled by the rivalry between transonic beauty and extreme structural atomization. This is in fact a full hour of frantically jagged live improvisation that will definitely expose, in a good number of subjects, the inability of receiving and synthesizing a large quantity of data, given the inborn impossibility of switching to multi-channel mode in their neural constitution. These persons will end describing this barely imaginable tit-for-tat as unendurably non-brooding, or just “out of fashion”. Indeed the methods through which the (mostly) clean sounds of the electric guitar get stretched, warped, mangled and thrown back at the source demolish any propensity to rumination. As if a premix of Fred Frith, Hans Reichel and – why not – Christopher Willits had been subjected to a journey inside the circuits of a billboard. Mere seconds before its explosion, that is. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

Quem partir para a audição de "Numbers" com uma ideia feita do que esperar de Richard Barrett e Han-Earl Park ficará, com certeza, surpreendido. Se o Barrett compositor de música contemporânea e o Barrett improvisador de electrónica no duo Furt e no Electro-Acoustic Ensemble de Evan Parker são, já à partida, bastante diferentes (apesar da sua convicção de que improvisar é apenas outra forma de compor), o que deste ouvimos agora distancia-se do "sampling" esquizóide a que nos habituou – os seus "outputs" neste disco identificam-se mais com as sonoridades sintetizadas dos antigos jogos de computador e videojogos. Por sua vez, o Park que aqui está não é o inventor e construtor de robôs e próteses musicais, mas o guitarrista. Percorrer outros caminhos implica neste disco aspectos positivos e negativos, mas verdade seja dita que a energia, o "drive" e o labor de sedimentação do ruído que vão desenvolvendo depressa nos conquistam. Rui Eduardo Paes

Performance aperta, a partire dall'omonimo poema di Simon Howard, Numbers è materiale con spiccata attitudine alla sfida linguistica e all'incursione a passo deciso e a tutto campo entro la mischia degli agitatori della forma aperta che ha già passato le barriere e i freni dell'azzardo.
Assai suggestivo l'interattivo duo protagonista: Barrett (che condivide il cognome di un distante ma efficace, grande visionario del sentire musicale) sospinge oltre l'ostacolo dei vincoli della forma le pulsioni delle elettroniche di cui dispensa e vaporizza esponenzialmente le valenze e i caratteri timbrici, laddove Park, forte della sperimentazione viva e costante sullo strumento a sei corde, assai esagitato nel potenziale armonico-melodico, dilata le ispirazioni a nervi scoperti e le destrutturazioni alla Derek Bailey, e il tutto scattando un'immagine in movimento ed (es)agitata di una avant-garde – già, di suo, indocile soggetto – e che qui trova convinti e motivati praticanti - esegeti.
Cinque tracks-passaggi per un'ora esatta di forte urgenza espressiva che si staglia dimensionalmente per impeto psico-attivo, densità partecipativa ed acidità di smalti e pigmenti - reinterpretata e rivissuta dal concentratissimo duo Barrett-Park, Numbers si fa "danza interattiva ad alta energia e a passo veloce, scriteriata, looping a due mani, danza contorta, interattiva e resa udibile, unità di estemporizzazione intensa e da brivido" secondo la concitata definizione autoriale e che, così enunciata, lascerebbe assai poco di accattivante al pubblico generale - ma poco importa, data la vocazione settoriale e la dedizione (peraltro con coscienza perseguita e coronata) all'acting gravido di rischio e all'esplorazione avventurosa. Romualdo Del Noce (Jazz Convention)

Le gargarisme est convaincant. D’un côté les electronics de Richard Barrett, de l’autre la guitare d'Han-Earl Park. Tous deux grouillent et cisaillent les volumes, réactivent la matière folle, rendent la télégraphie à sa fonction première : transmettre (Tolur). Leur improvisation en miroir engorge leur transe succube, fait déborder le vase, bouche la robinetterie (Tricav).

Parfois, au milieu des monstres soniques qu’ils viennent de créer, émerge une guitare façon Bailey (Ankpla). Mais rarement rassasiés (Uettet pour me faire mentir), les voici rassurant leur nervosité naturelle en un final aux brûlures fatales (II……). Le gargarisme est convaincant. Le vertige, tout autant. Luc Bouquet (Le Son du Grisli)

Creative Sources releases a plethora of improv/jazz and experimental electronic music.
Founded in 2000.

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