If you've not already caught these reviews from Sweden's Stephen Fruitman (who occasionally posts to Hyperreal's Ambient Mailing List), here are his latest. Stephen's attentive ears and expressive thoughts are appreciated by many, and I'm glad to offer this forum to my e-friend. Moondog: Telpmas (Kopf) Somebody has just got to write a book about this guy. Born Louis T. Hardin in Kansas in 1916 (and claiming to be a relative of the outlaw John Wesley Hardin), Moondog was blinded in an accident at seventeen years of age, spent some time among the Arapaho Indians (where he developed his life-long affection for percussion), and moved to NYC in 1943, where he cultivated an enormous beard and spent thirty years standing on a street corner playing his music and reciting his poetry. Hung out with Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker, was hailed by Philip Glass and Steve Reich as a precursor of minimalism, declaimed verse with Allen Ginsberg, appeared on stage with Lenny Bruce and Tiny Tim, made movies with William Burroughs. Suddenly, in 1974, he disappeared from his usual corner and many assumed he was dead; Paul Simon even went on television lamenting his passing. Turned out he had merely moved to Germany without telling anyone. He passed away for real last September. For some time now, the German label Kopf has been releasing works by Moondog, but only recently have they received wider distribution. Among the numerous meretricious recording available are H'art Songs (Moondog singing his own "naive" songs to piano accompaniment); A New Sound for an Old Instrument (miniatures for two pipe organs and percussion); and Sax Pax for A Sax, minimalistic swing for an all-saxophone orchestra. But none of them are quite the masterpiece which his work Elpmas might just be. Recorded in 1991, Elpmas is a thematic work dedicated to the aboriginal peoples of the world. Moondog composes very gentle music, led by his own marimba playing on many of the cuts, but interspersed with very "American" sounds like the banjo, discreetly sampled ethnic (African balaphone, Japanese koto, Indian bells) and environmental (children, rainstorms, some pretty badass sounding birds) sounds, and strings that sound directly lifted from the Renaissance court of some Medici. The occasional vocal incursion by a small men's choir (led, somewhat surprisingly, by Andi Thoma, one half of Mouse on Mars, who also co-produced) propels the narrative forward, most effectively on the charming faux horse opera "Westward Ho!". But this is primarily an instrumental album clad in a coat of many colours, and is thus appropriately concluded with a twenty-five minute "Cosmic Meditation", an ambient piece of Enoesque complex simplicity and beauty. Vidna Obmana & Willem Tanke: Variations for Organ, Keyboard and Processors (Multimood); Vidna Obmana: The Surreal Sanctuary (Hypnos); The Vidna Obmana juggernaut rolls on unimpeded. Every few months a new CD arrives from his Serenity Studio in Belgium, and every time, the quality is just as high. In the past couple of years collaborations have dominated his output, and the combination of his talents with the likes of Steve Roach, Asmus Tietchens and Alio Die has unfailingly expanded the boundaries of the universe they all inhabit. Recently he has begun choosing unlikelier collaborators, like jazz guitarist Serge Devadder and now, Dutch classical organist Willem Tanke. As its title indicates, Variations for Organ, Keyboard and Processors is an ambitious work. Willem Tanke has composed a series of pieces inspired by Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics from 1975, a comparative study of Western physics and Eastern mysticism staking a claim for remarkable similarities between the two. Vidna Obmana has rearranged and treated ("recycled" is the term he prefers to use) certain extracts from these pieces. The combination of the staid church organ and state-of-the-art electronics reflects the east/west, ancient/modern dichotemy of the text inspiring the artists. On his sophomore release for Hypnos, Vidna Obmana's first solo work since Crossing the Trail (recorded in 1996-97) treads confindently onto a kind of avantgarde ambient path, which he intends to continue exploring on The Contemporary Nocturne, a companion piece scheduled for release on the same label later in the year. The distinctive ethno rhythms of previous solo efforts have receded into the background as an atmosphere of pure minimalism is striven for and successfully achieved. Vidna Obmana claims that The Surreal Sanctuary is deliberately more sombre, wintry and monochrome than the kaleidescopic brilliance of much of his previous work. Indeed, a sanctuary is by definition a place of retreat and reflection as opposed to the open, life-affirming spaces suggested by titles likeA River of Appearance or Echoing Delight. Cerebral and yet emotionally appealing, reminiscent of the dark caverns of the soul in which Robert Rich can often be found spelunking, The Surreal Sanctuary sees Vidna Obmana ploughing new furrows in the sonic soil without abandoning the trademark mood which characterizes his earlier work. A record to play and replay many times in order to fully explore its quiet magnificence. Stephen Vitiello: The Light of Falling Cars (JdK); Frances-Marie Uitti & Stephen Vitiello: Uitti/Vitiello (JdK); Stephen Vitiello: Scratchy Marimba (Sulphur) And so yet another fascinating new artist's profile comes into focus. Though Stephen Vitiello is hardly a rookie on the avant music scene. While pretty well-hidden from the eyes of the general public most of the time, Vitiello has been anything but invisible on the New York City scenes in the past decade, making video art, scoring for dance, and curating musical events, most recently at the Whitney Museum. However, he has only recently begun releasing his music with some regularity and accruing the accolades he so rightly deserves. The Light of Falling Cars is a veritable smorgasbord of aural inventiveness, featuring sonic manipulations, guitar bending, and the famed accordian drone of Pauline Oliveros on two tracks. The press apparently once hailed Vitiello for creating "listenable avant-garde music", hearkening back to the praise which greeted Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach all those years ago. Found sounds are stretched and compressed beyond recognition, guitars are fed through "broken speakers", electronic chaos is tamed by warm organ tones. On "Hahn + Tape", the violinist Hahn Rowe duels with backward-running tape before his sweet caresses become more assertive in the title tracks' droning ethno-clash. The absolute highlight on an album whose topography is studded with peaks occurs when Vitiello and Oliveros encounter one another on "Trio" ("with Hahn added later") and "Duo", providing a deep-listening experience of impeccable delicacy. An album which provokes new thoughts about what sound can do. Uitti/Vitiello, also on JdK, is a 3" mini-album truly minimalistic in all its aspects. Housed in a tiny slipcase featuring nothing but the same photograph of a desert landscape with camel both front and back, and no more information proffered than the last names of the artists on the disc itself, this music spends one second less than twenty minutes creeping and crawling along the desert floor as Uitti rubs and grinds her double bow across the strings of her cello as Vitiello encourages her with an array of low, at times dry, at times muddy electronic gasps and moans. One cannot shake the feeling that something ominous is going on, that someone has discovered a corpse lying in the dirt and is trying to figure out whether to drag it away or dig it its final resting place on the spot. Quietly tortured strings and substratum electronica finally recede as Uitti provides a sweet-sounding coda accompanied by Vitiello's muted, motorik beat before the whole thing ends with a soft murmur. On the second offering from Robin Rimbaud's Meld series, Vitiello presents thirty-eight fresh, beatier minutes featuring the talents of friends like Scanner himself, Rowe and the imaginative drummer Dean Sharp. Scratchy Marimba is a minor revelation. Fractured beats and subtle sound bending dominate the first two tracks - the second of which, "Scratchy Marimba Meets the Low Pass Shrew", recalls Glass' contemporary Steve Reich - while "Loudmouth" is pointillist funk and "Forget What You Came For" a Scannerized brain teaser. After four tracks of astonishingly deft colour and depth, the finale of "Taxi Take Off Turbulence and Landing" and its de-mix comprise a surprisingly unengaging denouement. Regardless, these three CDs provide a window into the sonic world of an artist gifted with so much imagination that future releases are eagerly anticipated. Jah Wobble: 30 Hertz Collection (Meta) A sort of sampler assembled by Janet Rienstra at Meta from the seven full-length CDs Jah Wobble has released on his own label, 30 Hertz Records. The album marshalls an impressive cast of singers like Sussan Deyhim and Natacha Atlas and players of instruments including members of his Invaders of the Heart and Deep Space ensembles and musicians from China and the Subcontinent. Despite this, removing each tune from its original album context has resulted in a kind of unchallenging ethno-muzak. The tension achieved on better Wobble albums through his juxtaposition of styles and cultures seems to have been lost in transit. Atlas contributes some of her least goosebump-raising vocals on "Just a Prayer", and Sussan Deyhim is sadly underused on a cut from Wobble's pretentious Requiem. That the best cut by far is his duet with Bill Laswell, "Disks Winds and Veiling Curtains", is indicative that something just isn't working, seeing as in its original context (the album Deep Space) it is not the best cut by a longshot. Given the meditative profile of her label, perhaps the compiler was striving to capture the more spiritual essence of Wobble's music, but in doing so has unfortunately robbed it of all dynamic. Stephen Fruitman's Reviews were posted here on April 29, 2000.

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