Review of Northern [12k1037]

E-I (US)

After everything is over, there might still be something left. Northern, a title that might sum up a big chunk of culture and cultural dysfunction. constructs a fairly dispassionate and detailed look at what can be made of the remains. The imperatives of deconstructed music are unrelentingly observed in Northern and its seeming contradictions. The pieces exhibit a high level of organization; they intimate structure, they impel attention, cross over to embrace either active or passive listening, all the while remaining resolutely in pieces. Seemingly subsumed by any number of steps away from the instrument and the score, the audio is neither disparate nor disjointed nor capable of yielding to the purely intuited yammering of collage, assemblage or traditional lures of the concréte. While being pulled together by a deft touch for voicing and processing of the instrumental and found sources, we are persistently denied any access to the usual and recognizable forms. Instead, we hear a music built almost completely on and by association, proximity and juxtaposition. The traits that enforce a sense of inter-relatedness are defined by substituting typical organizational principles for a more personal and organically built toolkit comprised of sonic characteristics, durations, envelopes and the spatial characteristics of the soundstage. Deupree lends us access to a genuine alternative: music that is different not due to merely assuming a posture while remaining the same in every other measure, but different due to its organizing principles. K. LEIMER

View Release