Glenn's new song: "Anomaly Mvt 2"

[mariana neri]

Wilco drummer and composer Glenn Kotche keeps finding new possibilities in his drum kit, a changeable, slippery landscape teeming with small odd creatures and changeable terrain in his hands. For Anomaly, he gazed hard enough to discover a string quartet living inside of it; after failing, utterly, to write a quartet for the usual voices, he looked at his limbs, counted to four, and set about making the imaginative leap. From there, he transposed the parts back to the original instruments.  Just proves the old adage: Drummers think in drums.

This movement (the second of seven) hints at the fleet, coursing energy this technique uncorks. Kotche drums lightly behind the strings, the plucking and bowing getting tangled somewhere in the higher drumming's timbre until the line between bowing, beating, plucking, and thumping is all but erased. All that remains is a humming hive of texture. It might remind you of Matmos at their most genial, and it provides a brief, exhilarating glimpse into Kotche's upcoming Adventureland, his first solo album in eight years.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/16589-anomaly-mvt-2/

[lost highway]

Oh hell yes.

[nalafej]

Pre-order the Adventureland album here: http://bangonacan.org/store/music/adventureland

 

mix tape Glenn put together here: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/wilcos-glenn-kotche-spins-offbeat-influences/

 

I'm digging the mix tape.

[mariana neri]

Stream the complete album >> https://soundcloud.com/q2-music/sets/glenn-kotche-adventureland

 

"Adventureland" is the latest release from Glenn Kotche featuring his original compositions and will be available next week. His previous recording, "Mobile," is excellent; David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet thought so too, because after hearing it he asked Kotche to write a piece for them. The resulting seven movement work, Anomaly, for the Kronos Quartet with Kotche on drumkit and electronics is the musical thread that weaves through "Adventureland."

Kotche has been so involved in the contemporary music scene over the past several years that I’m not sure anyone reading this needs to be told that he’s also the drummer for Wilco, but there you go. He’s collaborated with So Percussion, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Eighth Blackbird, and Victoire, and he’ll be performing with cellist Maya Beiser later this month at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Listening to "Adventureland" from start to finish is a shuffle-like experience. All seven movements of Anomaly are interspersed between movements from other pieces. In fact, the other major piece on this recording, The Haunted (not for two pianos and two percussion, but instead “For Two Pianos vs. Percussion,” according to Kotche in the liner notes), is even in a mixed-up order, beginning with the fifth movement, ending with the second, and the first somewhere in the middle.

The Haunted, inspired by a tour Kotche took of a famously haunted former steel mill in Alabama, is energetically performed here by Lisa Kaplan and Yvonne Lam on piano and Matthew Duvall and Doug Perkins on percussion.

There are also two single movement pieces on "Adventureland." One of these is called The Traveling Turtle performed by Gamelan Galak Tika. Kotche could have easily made the piece much more complex, but instead there is a sense of restrained patience coupled with a subtle dramatic arc. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that the whole album follows this description.

The remaining track, Triple Fantasy, is made up of three different things all mashed together: the the fifth movement of Anomaly, a piece previously written for Eighth Blackbird called Double Fantasy, and various field recordings.

It’s no surprise that the music of a percussionist is so focused on rhythm, but that’s one of the most distinctive features of all of these pieces. Although there are several fleeting moments of lovely and easily recognizable melody in both Anomaly and The Haunted, this music is at its best when Kotche creates long stretches of colorful textures and infectious rhythmic activity.

 

 

'Glenn Kotche: Adventureland'

Cantaloupe Music | Rel. 3/25/14 

[LouieB]

This is cool. Got to see Anomaly at Ravinia several years ago. Glad some (or is it all of) this piece is finally getting recorded.

 

LouieB