In general, no one benefits from generalisations, but for argument’s sake, let’s treat Edwards and Serries as musicians who are usually associated with different spectrums of the realm of (improvised) music. With his energetic physicality, immense propulsive powers and colorful approach to the bass (check his collaborations with maestros McPhee, Moholo-Moholo, Brötzmann, etc), Edwards is often a man of vital and outgoing expression. Serries, on the other hand, usually inhabits a more restrained, dark-hued universe. His early industrial recordings were brimming with youthful nihilism, his later trajectories in the ambient/drones world often painted with gloomy shades, created a kind of moroseness that enveloped the listener in a grey dreamworld. Today, he is still a minimalist who prefers introspection.
These are all considerations that don’t really matter once you start improvising from scratch. Granted, you can always question the actual freedom of free music, but there is this openness from the start, and that one automatically comes with a kind of optimism. Trust in the interaction in a creative course. You could link this to the way children approach things, or each other. Before they are taught about rules, conventions, prejudices, expectations and other bullshit that keeps life from being 100% fun, kids have this tolerance for surprise and will react to it in an immediate and spontaneous way. That is why the ICP Orchestra, for instance, performed for children. Or check out that YouTube clip of Nordic free jazz unit The Thing playing in front of an entire hall of Texan school kids. Everyone was having a blast.
This release might bear the title Melancholia, but what I’m taking away from it is the playfulness of the music. It starts off with irregular, hesitant rustling and plucking, as if you are dealing with two guitars, but gradually it digs deeper, ventures broadly, with a lot of nervous fiddling at the strings, the sounds becoming more pronounced, denser, rhythmic. Then the onomatopoeias pop up and the music sizzles, clangs and clatters, plops and fizzes, crashes and screeches, whips and puffs. It creaks like a suspension bridge, rattles like a supply store, clunks and thunks like a bicycle repair shop. And the best thing about it? Throughout it all, you can actually hear – it can’t be just a figment of my imagination – the sheer joy of creating this compendium of sounds together, with space, counterpoint and independent simultaneous action. A lot of studying, practising and thinking was done by these musicians, but during these 45 minutes, a childlike spontaneity reigns. And it is infectious as hell.
Guy Peters 2021
