MOLLY
BERG + STEPHEN VITIELLO "THE GORILLA VARIATIONS"
(12K2013)
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BLOW
UP (IT)
L'idea di "The Gorilla Variations" nasce da una commissione
dell'artista brasiliano Éder Santos, tre minuti di colonna
sonora per la video-installazione "Boxing the Game"
il cui protagonista è Idi Amin, non il sanguinario presidente
ugandese bensì un solitario primate ospitato nello zoo
di Belo Horizonte. La sonorizzazione definitiva è stata
in realtà estratta con paziente lavoro di editing e post-produzione
da una seduta improvvisativa in presa diretta a cura di Stephen
Vitiello e della meno nota Molly Berg, mentre il restante materiale,
ovvero le divagazioni da esso derivate congiuntamente ad altre
registrazioni successive, sono state utilizzate per il completamento
dell'album in esame. In tutto cinque variazioni sul tema più
altrettante composizioni che mettono insieme tensione melodica
e disarmonia di tessitura, immaginaria forma canzone e paesaggio
elettro-acustico alla maniera scomposta e laterale cui il sound-artist
americano ci ha da sempre abituato, ma con il valore aggiunto
di una singolare grammatica della timidezza. Che viene esplicitata
dall'uno mediante pronunciati tentennamenti di accordi chitarristici
e piano elettrico, dall'altra grazie a gorgheggi indistinti
e note vaganti di un clarinetto triste, unitamente impiegando
registrazioni ambientali e campionamenti di varia natura (quelli
della Berg, va precisato, catturati creativamente con un registratore
giocattolo della Fisher-Price): una deriva ritrosa, come s'è
detto, che pure a tratti sembra voler cedere, farsi afferrare,
per risolversi infine schiva e quasi scostante. (7/8) Nicola
Catalano
BOOMKAT
(UK)
Followers of electronic music should already be acquainted with
the distinguished output of musician and sound artist Stephen
Vitiello. His work has previously been published via labels such
as Sub Rosa, while sound installations have been exhibited at
the Whitney Biennial. Add to this collaborations with Machinefabriek
and Lawrence English and Vitiello’s CV reads very nicely
indeed. Molly Berg comes from a very different background, having
previously appeared on recordings by Cracker and Magnolia Electric
Co. songwriter Jason Molina. The two Virginia-based artists came
together for a soundtrack project commissioned by Brazilian video
artist Eder Santos, whose video portrait of a lonely, zoo-dwelling
gorilla (named Idi Amin) was the starting point. Although only
a three-minute piece was required of the duo, they improvised
their way through forty minutes of guitar, clarinet, vocals, field
recording and electronics, the results of which then became the
basis for this charming and beguiling album. The sound field on
The Gorilla Variations carries an enormous amount of depth, with
each piece representing a finely tuned balance of instrumentation,
processing and sounds from the natural world. Above all else this
is an approachably musical album, casting electroacoustics in
a wholly accessible light – the pieces each take their different
instrumental focuses and delve into collaged composition, playing
melody against acousmatic timbre for a sonically gratifying intertwining
of song structure and soundscape. Highly recommended.
MUSIQUEMACHINE
(.COM)
This is a rather splendidly hazy childhood nostalgic & harmonic
collrabration that utilize a heady & dreamy mixture of guitar’s
& bass, electronics, clarinet, electric piano, female vocals,
field recording & processing.
Each of the 10 tracks on offer here lulls & drifts into each
other in a very appealing & dream like manner giving the whole
album the feel that it’s full of aged sonic postcards of
faded children’s parties, days at the seaside,or playfully
& vivid memory of childhood adventures with-in nature. We
go from melting vibe like tunefulness & reversed warming tone
& whistlers that rise with clarinet wonder & graceful
harmonics, onto slowly picked hazy summer clouds of guitar warmth,
wavering and melting female ahh’s & distant backyard
chatter. Through to electric piano sustains that break with layered
female fairground harmonies that hum of a distant time, before
lush water field recording knock against clarinet playfulness.
Really the whole album feels like an soothing, golden & daydream
adventure put in sonic form as the pair of Berg & Vitiello
carefully pull you along like a kid on a aged go-kart on magical
mystery tour with your best childhood buddies back across time.
The Gorilla Variations is a thoroughly pleasing, constantly inventive
and richly homed collection of often effortlessly harmonic &
golden sonic snapshots; it’s an album I’ve found myself
drifting through many times since I first heard & it still
holds up it’s wonder, grace & new elements with each
play. Certainly one of my favourite lulling & hypnotic treats
of this year and another very high point from the always rewarding
12 K label.
THE SILENT BALLET (.COM)
Recorded in one sitting as a soundtrack to an Éder Santos
film, The Gorilla Variations is an exploration of the possibilities
of melody, live interactive performance and post production
refinement. Stephen Vitiello is a long time collaborator and
experimental music innovator and the interaction with Molly
Berg, a vibrant multi-instrumentalist and singer, creates a
melodic, repetitive, and exploratory album. The various elements
of the performance meld to create an interesting if not a little
unfocused album.
The variations, while considered separate tracks, are basically
one long composition chopped up and reworked in the mixing stage
to create unique explorations of the same session. Every piece
of 'sound' on the album seems to have some sort of processing
applied to add a non-acoustic texture to acoustic elements.
The guitar often begins clean, then as the experiment progresses,
so does the destruction of the natural sound of the guitar.
This holds true for the extremely beautiful wandering vocals
from Molly Berg. Her solo voice is augmented by layering via
samples, multi-tracking, and various processing techniques.
Even the clarinet has some added spice from multi-tracking and
filters. While on the subject of clarinets, I find their addition
to be a personal touch that not only completes the human element
to an otherwise experimental and electronically produced album,
but it adds a texture that no synth has yet been able to recreate.
All of the elements together create the bulk of the album and
it is this concise rendition of the instrumentation that is
also the album’s shortcoming.
Being recorded in one sitting is a boon and a curse for this
album. Having time to work through the various ideas and themes
caused an apparent progression in ideas, but here it seems to
take a little too much time on the main theme in general. There
is enough variation within each segment as is especially evident
in “Variation 3” with its extremely processed guitar
sounds, but the overall feeling of the album is that it drags
on a little much. Songs like “Geese”, which was
not a part of the original variations, are a delight of experimentation
that take a new approach to the collaboration and it was a very
wise decision to add these other songs into the 'variations'
mix. The addition of numerous found sound elements also help
push the album forward when it is feeling a little old.
This is a great album that exhibits both the human and electronic
elements that are possible in a collaboration and shows what
can be done in a single, live recording session. However, the
live recording tends to lack direction at times but the pure
textural innovations and explorations more than make up for
this slight shortcoming. The Gorilla Variations is worth a listen
for those who are interested in all forms of acoustic and electronic
exploration as well as those looking for a film soundtrack.
-Greg Norte
SQUIDS
EAR (.COM)
The Gorilla Variations from Molly Berg and Stephen Vitiello
at first sound like curious, snake-charming music. It's looped
chimes, stereo panning and artful layering have a slight ethnic
flavor; and at points it's almost as though the duo are debating
the limits of the folk tradition. Together they toy with fragments
of traditional song, a snippet of vocal melody, vibrations similar
to the deep sea harmonies of humpback whales, broken rhythms;
their spacious, almost cosmic arrangements soaking up all of
these nuances and recombining them in varying permutations as
in a dream.
That's perhaps what the album most sounds like, a dream; but
one in which most everything, even the craggy cover image, seems
to have its part. The sculpted approach helps everything from
becoming merely scattered. It also has the added effect of diluting
the sense of location. Environmental sounds such as trickling
water, particular and yet universal, only further this effect
all the more, allowing the work to come closer as it moves further
away.
While the work, especially at first, might seem to exhibit an
almost pantheistic awe of the natural (and digital) world(s),
with time other sentiments surface; the final three tracks,
in particular, with their eventful horn drones, laced with clarinet
harmonies and surreptitious activity, see the previously meditative
engagement with sound become awash with a sort of heightened
sensitivity and vulnerability. It doesn't build up many events
during its duration, in fact it's some fifty minutes go by like
a flash, but it's nothing if not a pleasant castle in the sky.
- Max Schaefer
TEXTURA
(.ORG)
An unusual release in many respects (and not just because of
odd title), The Gorilla Variations brought Virginia-based sound
artists Stephen Vitiello and Molly Berg together to create the
soundtrack for a project by Brazilian Éder Santos . Interestingly,
though only a three-minute piece was needed from the duo for
Boxing The Game, Santos's video portrait of Idi Amin, a lonely
gorilla housed in the Belo Horizonte Zoo, Vitiello and Berg
recorded forty minutes of improvised material, the idea being
that they would then send Santos a three-minute segment for
the video. Not only did the pair create the requested piece
(using an eclectic assortment of sound sources including Berg's
vocals, clarinet, and samples, and Vitiello's guitar, bass,
and electric piano, plus field recordings of chirping birds,
dribbling water, et al. from the Richmond area), but they also
produced four variations using the session's material. The duo
continued collaborating in the months that followed, with five
more tracks ultimately joining the original five.
The ten limpid electro-acoustic settings inhabit a middle ground
between song and soundscape with the mood generally meditative
and the material serenading and even gamelan-inflected at times.
Focal points shift from Berg's soft vocal murmuring (“Geese”)
or clarinet multi-tracking (“Dogs/Last Clarinet”)
in one piece to Vitiello's loops of guitar shadings and plucks
(“Variation 5”) in another. The bleat of Berg's
clarinet gives the music a distinguishing character, and much
the same could be said for the recurring glimmers of electric
piano and bright chimes of Vitiello's electric guitar. “Gorilla/Variation
1 (for Éder Santos)” offers a representative sampling
of the material's wide-ranging instrumental colour: bell tinklings,
guitar slivers, Theremin-like whistles, electric piano, clarinet,
field and sounds (outdoor noises, dog barking) all emerge during
the meditative setting, whose near-static character and chord
progression nods in the direction of Eno's opening Music For
Airports piece. “Kora” augments Berg's wordless
vocal musings and Vitiello's guitar lattices with bird chirps
while “Geese” exudes a jaunty and whimsical feel.
If there's a weakness to the album, it's the absence of a dramatic
arc with each piece a largely even-keeled and peaceful setting.
TOUCHING
EXTREMES (IT)
Brazilian
video artist Éder Santos, a longtime collaborator of Stephen
Vitiello, asked him for help in organizing a soundtrack for a
filmic portrait of a lonely gorilla named Idi Amin, who lives
in Belo Horizonte’s zoo, as a part of an installation called
Boxing The Game. The original request was for a short fragment,
yet Vitiello and Molly Berg recorded about 40 minutes of material
to choose from, which constitute more or less 4/5 of this CD’s
content.
The couple utilized an elusive blend of instruments (clarinets,
guitar, bass, electric piano), samples and field recordings, also
exploiting Berg’s daydreaming vocalizations and distilling
the whole into an intoxicatingly scented sonic substance. That
Vitiello has returned to playing a real instrument for the first
time in circa 6 years is a noteworthy detail, as it is exactly
this mixture of studio seaming and semi-improvised candour that
gifts this album with an appreciable feeling of wholesomeness,
lots of space to roam amidst ethereal loops, assorted melodic
ingenuities and improvisations that may appear démodé
for the cynical among us, but on the contrary are gifted with
deepness to spare. The association between the transparency of
the procedures, the mesmerizingly heart-warming simplicity of
the pieces, and the fact that the work is dedicated to a solitary
animal whose physical aspect is, ideally, quite threatening (as
opposed to the tenderness perceived throughout) is a winning combination.
There’s not a single occasion in which the initial idea
overstays its welcome. All that’s stretched in terms of
repetition and duration is never strained, looking near to some
sort of bodiless manifestation. Indeed, an easily gaugeable spiritual
level characterizes the entire record.
A classic case of creative sincerity determining the birth of
something that encourages repeated savouring. Though not really
a milestone, surely The Gorilla Variations does good in getting
close to that status, in idyllic fashion. Idi Amin would feel
flattered by this treatment.
VITAL WEEKLY (NL)
Stephen
Vitiello released before on 12K, an excellent collaboration with
Machinefabriek and here he does one with Molly Berg, of whom we
learn 'is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has appeared
on recordings by Cracker and Jason Molina' - entirely my mistake
that this doesn't mean much to me I guess. Together they played
some music for Brazilian video artist Eder Santos, but it turned
out they had so much material that they edited to some more 'songs'
and 'variations' out of it. Berg plays clarinet, voice, whistling,
field recordings and such like and Vitiello returns to playing
the guitar here, after a six years hiatus. Quite intimate music
going on here, but also a bit single minded. The flageletto guitar
playing is a thing you can do only so often on a record and not
an entire record I guess. I'd say again later night atmospheric
music like Pillowdiver, but I'd play that one first and then this
one, as Vitiello & Berg have a some what softer pace in them.
Both CDs are
nice, but not as spectacular. (FdW)
THE
WIRE (UK)
This
collaboration betwen songwriter Molly Berg and sound artist Stephen
Vitiello began witha commission to score a three minute soundtrack
for a video by Eder Santos. The subject was a lonely gorilla housed
in a Brazilian zoo, and Berg and Vitiello's original soundtrack
stands as an easy exercise in tugging at liberal heartstrings.
The maudlin sounds wafting around minor key guitar and spacious
arrangements for clarinet are way too obvious for artists as good
as Berg, who has worked with Jason Molina in Magnolia Electric
Co, and Vitiello, whose inventive installation work has rightfully
earned him an international reputation. Fortunately, the two continued
to work after the commission was submitted, and a series of variations
on the original theme emerged: previously rendered electroacoustic
dubs, digital clickscapes smeared out of the original material,
and brightly elliptical patterns that allude to Terry Riley.
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