The Squid's Ear Magazine


Kuchen, Martin / Ed Pettersen / Roger Turner: The End Of The Universe (Split Rock Records)

Swedish saxophonist Martin Kuchen (Angles), US guitarist Ed Pettersen, and UK percussionist Roger Turner join together in London for a studio album of improvisations referencing the vastness of space through the exploration of textures and sounds, influenced by the "Interstellar Transmissions" album that improvised with the sounds of the Voyager spacecraft.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Martin Kuchen-saxophone, sounds

Ed Pettersen-8 string lap steel guitar, effects

Roger Turner-drums, percussion


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UPC: 600793180080

Label: Split Rock Records
Catalog ID: SRR18008
Squidco Product Code: 26665

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2018
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Westpoint Studios, in London, United Kingdom, in 2017, by Shane Shanahan.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"The End of the Universe features Swedish saxophonist Martin Kuchen, American guitarist Ed Pettersen, and British percussionist Roger Turner in a decidedly experimental recording. While all three artists have a virtuoso command of melodic structure, their first recording together is an exploration of textures and sounds. Rather than being propelled forward on the crest of a melody, the listener must sit inside of the music to fully absorb the sensations evoked by the aural landscapes.

It is the type of experimental improv that reminds one that listening to music is a whole-body experience... where vibrations weigh strongly in the emotional response. When contemplating where such soundscapes fit into the definition of music, the phrase attributed to 19th century composer Ferruccio Busoni may best apply "Music is sonorous air".

The collaboration between the three players came about because of their work improvising to the tunes of the Voyager spacecraft on Interstellar Transmissions (Split Rock 2018), an experiment led by Pettersen with the enthusiastic cooperation of Henry Kaiser who helped coordinate some of the participants. Having recorded together on Disc II of Interstellar Transmissions, the trio decided to extend their time in the studio in London to explore where a completely spontaneous session would take them.

What at first feels somewhat tentative or contemplative builds swiftly into a driving and coherent narrative, whether by design or simply a consequence of the musicians playing together for the first time is hard to know. Perhaps it is design, as the tracks are well named starting with "As Far as You Can Hear" which is more contemplative in nature, followed by the more playful "Voyager". "Far Out" presents as a wall of sound, while "The End of the Universe" embodies agitation.

One of the interesting feats of this record is that it is often difficult to distinguish whether certain sounds are being produced by Turner on percussion or Pettersen on eight string lap steel. Kuchen adds to the sound experiments by playing his sax through a soda can on one of the tracks. Electronic effects used with restraint create a crisp backdrop for the delightful sounds and textures the trio explore as they grow increasingly adventurous.

It is well worth the time to sit with the music and let it breathe, to fully appreciate the interplay between these three special artists."-Split Rock



This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Artist Biographies

"Born 1966; saxophones. Martin Küchen has been active on the Swedish free improvised/free jazz scene since the mid-1990s. He has composed for larger groups, participated in dance projects, performed with different poets and created the music for experimental films. He now collaborates with improvisors all over Europe and USA/Canada. His current collaborations include:

Angles - a new trio with Ingebrigt Håker- Flaten, doublebass, Kjell Nordeson, drums and Martin Küchen, saxophones. Exploding Customer - a free jazz quartet with Tomas Hallonsten trumpet, Benjamin Quigley double bass and Kjell Nordeson drums, which plays mainly original compositions. Sound of Mucus - a trio with the stringchordist Herman Müntzing and Andreas Axelsson, percussion. Unsolicited Music Ensemble - a trio with Tony Wren, double bass and Raymond Strid, percussion. a duo with guitarist David Stackenås. UNSK: Birgit Ulher, Martin Küchen, lise-Lott Norelius and Raymond Strid. Looper - a trio with Greek cello player Nikos Veliotis and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach."

-European Free Improv Site (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/mkuchen.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"As an artist, Pettersen has worked long and hard to develop his craft and in doing so has achieved a depth and sophistication that is just now being recognized. An emerging Americana artist in the 90's still driven by the twin influences of Springsteen and the country rebel artists of his youth, Pettersen gained attention for his second release "Somewhere South of Here". Steeped in Americana and country rhythms, the album fell somewhere between the traditional sounds of Americana and the rocking slide guitar of country radio and the tongue in cheek single "DWIOU" (Driving While Intoxicated on You) found a place in jukeboxes worldwide and on the country line dance charts.

But Pettersen's passion for music of all genres was unlimited and led to forming the rock band The Strangely's with friend and drummer Pete Abbott, his brother Mike (one of the finest guitar players Ed knows to this day), and bass player Lori Adams. Despite the great sound of the band, without label support and the inability to tour widely, the Strangely's drifted apart leaving Pettersen with two of his finest rock cuts, the moody and dark "Broken Mirror" and the plaintive "Justine". Around the same time a mysterious illness hit Pettersen hard, sending him through a long odyssey of doctors and hospitals, and being felled by acute physical pain for which there was no visible cause. Temporary paralysis of the vocal chords was a recurring symptom and so for several years Pettersen concentrated on songwriting and production, producing the quirky and gorgeous voiced duo Rosasharn and developing the concept for the Song of America.

An innate drive to hone his craft and work with the best of the best led Pettersen to Nashville in 2002. There, working with the best meant assembling a crack recording unit dubbed The Great American Rhythm section, featuring Reggie Young, Bob Babbitt, Dave Hungate, Catherine Marx, and Ed Greene on drums. The unit played a key role in many of the recordings for Song of America and other Pettersen productions. The only explanation that Pettersen could come up for why they convened at will when called was "They liked to play with each other and I didn't tell them what to do. Am I going to tell Reggie Young who has more number one hits than any guitar player how to play?" So while other songwriters were networking with country artists in town, Pettersen started getting cuts like his marvelous "I Guess We Shouldn't Talk About That Now," on Bettye LaVette's Grammy nominated 2007 The Scene of the Crime and "I Don't Want Anything" on Candi Staton's Who's Hurting Now?, from 2009. The latter includes one of the most delicate and poignantly beautiful lines of all time "Like the beauty of a child's smile, the future on an angel's wing".

In just the last few years Pettersen has re-emerged as a full-fledged recording and touring artist and in the meantime his voice and talents have grown tremendously. Discovering his Norwegian roots and Scandinavian heritage is the catalyst for the hauntingly melodic acoustic tunes on I Curse the River of Time. But it is the amalgamation of his early years honing a few well-crafted words in advertising, working with playwright and mentor John Bishop, trying a hand at film production, overcoming hardship and illness, and through it all constantly studying music, art, literature, and life that makes Pettersen an artist of note and a poet worth discovering."

-Ed Pettersen Website (https://www.edpettersen.com/bio)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Roger Turner (born 1946, Whitstable, England) is an English jazz percussionist. He plays the drumset, drums, and various percussion, and was brought up into the jazz and visual art cultures inhabited by his older brothers, playing drums from childhood in informal jazz contexts.

Turner studied English literature and contemporary philosophy at Sussex University, playing with Chris Biscoe for the British Council in 1968, a first concert in improvisation. His move to London gave him contact with the first and second generation improvisers and he began to play primarily with Lol Coxhill, Gary Todd, John Russell, Hugh Davies, Steve Beresford, and Phil Minton.

In the years immediately after 1974 his work was primarily concentrated on opening the way to a more personal percussion language. This was also a period of intense collaborations that structured many of his future approaches to music-making and saw the formation of two long-lasting acoustic duos with Phil Minton and with John Russell. Recordings of these duos document an extreme attention to timbre and pitch, as well as a constantly shifting speed that typified much of his work at the time. The duo with Minton toured extensively throughout Europe, USA and Canada.

In 1979 he established CAW records with John Russell and Anthony Wood, and recorded the solo album The Blur Between focussing on single surface improvisations: a linear and reduced equipment approach he had started using with Carlos Zingaro and others in live performances.

In addition to forming Trump music with Gary Todd to promote improvised music in London, he also involved himself in formative activities of the London Musicians Collective during this period. He was awarded Arts Council of Great Britain bursaries for solo percussion in 1980, and in 1983 for investigation into percussion with electronics. Extensive festival and club solo work followed, including the Bracknell Jazz Festival and the Brussels Festival of Percussion.

In 1982 the trio The Recedents was formed with Lol Coxhill and Mike Cooper exploring the possibilities of electro-acoustic music, in which Turner initially played drumset and EMS Synthi A as a means of bending the sounds of various metal percussion instruments. This group, still existing, mixes song, jazz, punk/thrash, with acoustic detail in always shifting sonorities, and has worked throughout Europe, Canada and the UK, also recording for the French Nato label. Involvements with experimental rock musics and open-form song included extensive work in duo with Annette Peacock 1983-5, with whom he toured in Europe and Scandinavia. They recorded the album I have no feelings for Ironic.

In 1984-5, he was invited for workshop residences at Alan Silva's Institute Art Culture Perception in Paris, where long-term collaborations with Alan began, culminating in The Tradition Trio with Johannes Bauer. This group was central to his explorations of forms of free jazz, an interest that has seen him working with musicians on both sides of the Atlantic (including Elton Dean, Irene Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, Roy Campbell, Henry Grimes, The Wardrobe Trio and Charles Gayle).

Since the early 1980s his work has focussed on numerous projects with improvising musicians and groups, touring Europe, Australia, USA and Canada. Perhaps the most important of the later groups would be Konk Pack, formed in 1997, with Tim Hodgkinson and Thomas Lehn, a group whose use of volume and sense of detail continues the exploration of an electro-acoustic dynamic that forms one of his main musical concerns. This group has toured extensively in Europe and USA.

He forged working relationships with Japanese musicians over the years: in the 1980s with Toshinori Kondo in the trio with John Russell, but since the mid-1990s in concerts and recordings with guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi in Austria, Japan, and U.K, and in the recent (2009) Hana-Bi three-day event in London that included the guitarist and the pianist Chino Shuichi.

An active involvement in visual art has always been in dialogue with his music, and an inspiration for it. In the forefront of this is his work with Susan Turcot (the investigation/documentation of music and sound-drawing both in Europe and Canada-including the Being Rich box collection --, and music for her 2008 animation film Bitumen, Blood, and the Carbon Climb.

His music for dance/performance includes work with Alexander Frangenheim's Concepts of Doing, Stuttgart ; Carlos Zingaro's Encontros projects in Lisbon and Macau; and most recently in the Josef Nadj production etc.etc. (premiered Vandeouvre, France, 2008) and which is a continuing involvement.

In March 2009 he was invited to travel and perform on the Arctic island Svalbard, and was also invited to attend and play in the Comprovise event in Cologne, Germany in June 2009, set up to examine any possible relationship between improvisation and composition.

Turner's music-making with international improvisers in ad hoc and group collaborations have since the 1970s to the present day included Toshinori Kondo, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Otomo Yoshihide, Shelley Hirsch, Joelle Leandre, Keith Rowe, Ab Baars, Barry Guy, Barre Philips, Henry Grimes, Paul Rutherford, Gunter Christmann, Marilyn Crispell, Irene Schweizer, Frederik Rzewski, and Malcolm Goldstein."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Turner_(musician))
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. As Far As You Can Hear 13:55

2. Voyager 11:44

3. Far Out 8:24

4. The End Of The Universe 10:53

5. Gone 7:44

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Split Rock Records.


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