On the subject of harmony (in relationships, not music, per se), author Thomas Moore, the Zen arbiter on the subject of The Soul and its affairs with the universe, writes, "Our ultimate goal is to find ways to embrace both attachment and resistance to attachment, and the only way to that reconciliation of opposites is to dig deeply into the nature of each". This is sound advice for improvising musicians who continually rack their brains over which sound to use, which to avoid, when to start and stop etc., but how does one apply this when he or she actually has to interact in a group setting? For the latest from sax player Lotte Anker, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and laptop-ist Ikue Mori's tenuous band, the answer is "it's for the birds".
At times a Messiaen-like transcription of avian song, Alien Huddle is the result of the trio's conceptual exploration of birds and their connection to both each other and the surrounding environment. From the outset of the opener "Morning Dove", the trio exudes, as the liner notes detail, an "enticing polyphony of constantly shifting colors, densities and spatial relationships" in the same method as their winged counterparts. Courvoisier's low register thump signals Mori's whirl of synthetic chimes, shimmying hisses and time-stretched glitches; Anker woofs and overblows her instrument as the pianist continues with a shimmering, squirming tinkle; Mori spits out reversed attacks, gurgles and soaring squawks (that may or may not be crow samples) with real-time processing. "Woodpecker Peeks"(sic) is a percussive flurry that capably lives up to its name: panned cricket snares and otherwise micro-percussion mingle with Courvoisier's flailing muted staccato and Anker's trills, all sealed by Mori with an echoing ratchet. Near the point where the relentless prattle wears thin, the trio adopts a softer, lugubrious aesthetic, forging "Night Owl" with a flowing undercurrent of flanging drones, prepared piano and sustained alto tones. Likewise, the group excels on "Whistling Swan", a delicate expedition via negative space, airy static, occasional sound board strums and taps and Anker's seductive Pied Piper impersonation.
Though rife with cunning elements and alluring nuances, the sound world (particularly the LFO wanking and pitch-bent electronic wobbles of the electronics portion) of Alien Huddle is at times globally redundant, something you drown out around twenty minutes in. To boot, the performances are often internally disconnected. The artists might counter by holding up the extra-musical program and argue "that's what we're going for!", but from a musical standpoint, the album would benefit from more codependence, an augmentation of group dynamics instead of interjectory collisions and less idle chatter.
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