AERAE - Senufo Editions
-----
‘aerae’ is a weave of improvisations executed on various instruments (koto, rebab, positive organ, Coupigny modular synthesizer), captured and then treated as if they were field recordings. It’s about reducing the instrumental gesture to simple expressive material, shaping it while loosing control over it, letting it grow until there is no more readability in terms of ways of playing. Just like bad weed destroying the order of a highly organised garden.
-----
REVIEWS
- Boomkat
- Vital Weekly 757 | Frans De Waard
- The Wire 323 | Nick Cain
- Joseph Ghosn
Boomkat
Limited to 180 copies for the world* Parisian composer Kassel Jaeger is a member of famed electronic music institution Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), which puts him in esteemed company (notable former members include founder Pierre Schaefer plus Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis and Bernard Parmegiani), though this new album from the excellent Senufo Editions imprint finds him departing from the sort of concrète sound manipulations you'd probably expect from the GRM school, and instead delivering an album that starts with instrumental improvisations.
Using koto, rebab, positive organ and Coupigny modular synthesizer, Jaeger captures sound sources and subtly sets to work on "reducing the instrumental gesture to simple expressive material, shaping it while losing control over it, letting it grow until there is no more readability in terms of ways of playing. Just like bad weed destroying the order of a highly organised garden." The electronic post-production doesn't really manifest itself so intrusively as that metaphor might have you believe, though it does seem to leave the music somehow devoid of an authorial grounding. Rather than sounding performative or composed, these sounds just 'are'. This is never more so the case than on the first entry, a superb drone piece that evokes Eliane Radigue in its richness of sound and intense steadiness. More kinetic content emanates from the second track, generating scratchy, bowed metallic resonances and shifting bass tones within a very full, supremely well-designed production; Jaeger seems to approach each of these five compositions with a completely different idea, and this continual shifting combined with the immaculately judged durations makes for a powerful and wonderfully rounded album. The relatively brief and very quiet third track harnesses warm, sustaining organ pitches, rich in quivering overtones while the fourth (the longest track here, at just over nine minutes) perhaps most openly makes use of computer treatments and digital processing - although the fifth might be more extreme in its own way: you can gradually hear flecks of micro-melody evolving from its strange, groaning electroacoustic superstructure. On top of how great the individual pieces are, this is a fantastic sounding record; Aerae was given an analogue mastering treatment with Robert Hampson (aka Main), and fittingly, the packaging ensures an appropriately lavish finish, housing the disc in a letterpressed, hand-numbered sleeve. Highly limited (180 copies) and highly recommended.
Vital Weekly 757 | Frans De Waard
Kassel Jaeger has his third release, following one on Mystery Sea (see Vital Weekly 611) and their sub-division Unfanthomless (see Vital Weekly 745). He is a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris. For this release Jaeger works with various instruments, such as koto, rebab, positive organ, Coupigny modular synthesizer and does improvisations on them. I assume that in the process of mixing he adds, subtracts and then put into some form of organization. Very much, says Jaeger, like he would do when using field recordings. The five parts blend into eachother in a rather organic way. The music sounds quite improvised, with scrapings of the koto. Things worked better, I thought when the improvised music elements are pushed away in favor for longer sustaining sounds from the electronic equipment, such in the second part of the fourth piece, or the entire third piece (all untitled of course). The mixture of both ends however works quite well and its great to see Jaeger breaking away from pure electronically field recording work here. An excellent CD.
The Wire 323 | Nick Cain
"The Paris based Kassel Jaeger is a member of The Groupe de Recherches Musicales, but there's nothing dry or academic about Aerae, which weaves material improvised on a range of instruments (koto, organ, modular synthetizer) into mellifluously drifting drone constructions.
Jaeger plays delicately on the contrasting texture of his acoustic and synthetic sources, layering creaking koto scrapes with sustained electronic sounds in discreet but judicious juxtapositions. [...] Aera's lulling momentum and pleasant melodies are underpinned by a structural sophistication and some astute compositional tweaks. "
Joseph Ghosn
J’ai rencontré Kassel Jaeger, dont j’ignore si je dois dire le vrai prénom, grâce à Matmos, il y a une poignée d’années, aux environs des studios du GRM. Depuis, il m’a envoyé ce disque, qui s’est un temps perdu dans mes piles et en a ressurgi après une conversation aux Ondes, sous le vent. Le disque, de nuit, évoque une mélancolie rugueuse, une forme de méditation tendue, débutant par un bourdon quasi céleste, mais qui, vite, se métamorphose par l’addition de sons concrets, acoustiques, que l’on dirait parfois cosmiques, parfois antédiluviens. Souvent, le temps de cet album court, à la si belle pochette, il semble que la vie ait décidé de s’arrêter, mettre en pause toute activité pour écouter comment surgissent lentement les faunes, les idées. Comment, aussi, se fabriquent les interstices de lumière dans des matières musicales.
