Rhys Chatham fans who have had to make do with only a handful of releases over the last 30 or so years have been awaiting this release with much anticipation. Whether or not it provides an adequate slaking of that thirst, a couple of caveats are in order. Unmentioned on the outer cover of the box (or anywhere in the thick booklet that accompanies the discs) is the fact that much of the second disc consists of previously reissued material. This may or may not be an issue as it's very fine material only available long-out-of-print vinyl, but it should have been made clearer to prospective purchasers about to plunk down $50 for the lavish box set. And lavish it is, complete with a 144-page booklet adorned (as are the disc sleeves) with wonderful, silvered Robert Longo photos, containing essays by Tony Conrad and Lee Ranaldo as well as numerous writings by Chatham himself.
Disc one is devoted to a single, hour-long piece, the early "Two Gongs" from 1971. Taken from a live 1989 performance at Experimental Intermedia with Chatham and Yoshimasa Wada, the work is as advertised: two large Chinese gongs relentlessly assaulted at varying dynamic levels, the sound rarely totally disappearing as wave upon wave of overtones descend upon the listener. It's arguably the most successful piece in the set: a rigorous idea, simple in aspect but producing a stunning complexity of outcome, and aurally ravishing. The overall effect isn't entirely dissimilar to that achieved by Chatham (or Branca) with masses of differently tuned guitars but it's every bit as riveting and, happily, neglects to employ the sometimes deadening rock backbeat. Loud, raucous, barely controlled and sublime.
The second disc kicks off with "Die Donnergotter" for five guitars, bass and drums, originally released on the Dossier album of the same name in 1987. I'm not sure whether or not the piece will sound dated to someone who hadn't heard it before now, but to those of us who experienced it back when, it still packs the same joyful wallop, strutting along jauntily, riff piled upon riff, with its own special kind of clarity and orgasmic tension and release. It's followed by another work from the same album, one of two brass-based pieces featured here, "Waterloo No. 2". Three trumpets and two trombones snake through hypnotic lines overlaid on martial snare drum rhythms. It's an odd, oil-and-water kind of mix that never quite seems to justify the conjuncture, but not uninteresting to wade through. "Drastic Classicism" first appeared on the fine compilation, "New Music from Antarctica", put together by Peter Gordon in 1982 (and which desperately needs reissuing on disc in its entirety). It's something of an antecedent to "Die Donnergotter" but far less melodic and more brutal, clearly showing the debt Chatham owed to the further flung reaches of punk. Back to the Dossier album for "Guitar Trio", an early composition (1977) that holds up remarkably well, arguably better than the other pieces on this disc. All based around Chatham's incessant worrying of the low E string, it takes its time, ambling along, picking up layers of strength and arrives, fully formed, before the listener is quite aware of what happened. It's everything LaMonte Young's Forever Bad Blues Band could never quite achieve. The final track is an interesting one. It appears to be an alternate take of the composition that appeared as "For Brass" on Chatham's 1983 Moers album, "Factor X". Here titled "Massacre on MacDougal Street", it's actually something of an improvement on the original, richer and more expansive. An all-star brass ensemble, including George Lewis, Olu Dara, Jim Staley and Bob Stewart, negotiate intricate patterns that range from staccato march rhythms to heady drones, all over the mighty drums of Anton Fier.
The final disc is given over to a performance (more accurately, two performances edited into one) of "An Angel Moves Too Fast to See", Chatham's magnum opus from 1989 and, unfortunately, it's the box set's biggest disappointment. One reason may simply be due to the recording process. While a hundred electric guitars might well have sounded fairly awesome in a live situation, especially if they were spatially deployed in an interesting manner, on disc they're necessarily conflated. What the listener hears emerging from speakers doesn't sound noticeably different from the effect achieved with five or six guitars; if anything, it just makes the sound a bit blurrier. Far more crucially, the music itself has begun to sound like little more than a rehash of earlier ideas, particularly those used in "Die Donnergotter". The third section, especially, sounds like an outtake from that work. When he does introduce a novel approach, as in the fourth section where the massed guitar army engages in some fairly quiet, zitherish plinking and strumming, the outcome just isn't that fascinating. This isn't to say that the music is bad by any means and the final sequence does generate a decent, chaotic head of steam, but there's too much that sounds warmed-over, too much of a treading water quality. Considering the length of time Chatham fans had been waiting for some new music that wasn't rave or jungle-oriented, they're likely to be left with something of an empty feeling in their stomachs. Possibly worth the purchase depending on what you already own or your depth of appreciation for Chatham's work, but buyer beware.
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