How does a composer cultivate an individual voice when music contains so many, much of it on record lest we forget? Unlike some out there, Brooklyn-based Scott Wollschleger creates his dystopian sound world without consciously striving for originality, and yet each of the five pieces here has something uniquely ‘Wollschlegeran’ about it, extruding timbral effects from common or garden instruments in penetrating essays that repay repeated listening.
Brontal Symmetry – the word is made up – uses “discarded scraps” from other works in a cartoon patchwork for piano trio (played here by Longleash, the work’s dedicatee). It’s goofy and lopsided, maniacal and groovy. Soft Aberration finds pianist Karl Larson and violist Anne Lanzilotti approach and part in a fractured chordal duet reminiscent of Feldman – a composer whose name crops up in conjunction with Wollschleger’s meditative work.
Cellist John Popham enters into the complex “glitchy” and “fragile” textures of America, Wollschleger’s neurotic eight-minute solo road trip. The glacial White Wall, on the other hand, takes its lead from the idea of what’s left when we drain music of music itself. With bleached-out yet imaginatively deployed tone, Mivos Quartet do a very fine job indeed of showing that white noise can be musical too. Bring Something Incomprehensible Into This World for trumpet and voice intriguingly does just that. Beautifully recorded, Wollschleger’s is a new voice well worth exploring.
Composer: Scott Wollschleger
Composition: Soft Aberration
Performer: Various artists
Catalogue Number: New Focus FCR182
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