Label: Leo Records
Category: Music
Average customer rating:
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1
EAN: 5024792030620
ASIN: B00005AU5R
Release Date: 2001-04-10
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Artist:
Anthony Braxton
Label: Leo Records Category: Music Average customer rating:
Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 EAN: 5024792030620 ASIN: B00005AU5R Release Date: 2001-04-10 |
Avant Garde & Free Jazz
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Jazz
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Styles
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Music
General
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Jazz
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Styles
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Music
General
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Pop
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Styles
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Music
General
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Jazz
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Indie Music
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Stores
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Music
Avant-Garde
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Jazz
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Indie Music
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Stores
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Music
Tracks:
Customer Reviews:
Ghost Trance Music Revisited.......2002-10-09
Ghost Trance Music is a genre of music developed by Braxton which is inspired by the sort of endless run-on melodies that can be found in many world cultures. The basic conception is that the ensemble plays a very long melody in running eighth notes, broken only by occasional bursts of faster figures. The ensemble plays in a sort of Braxtonian unison - the melody is notated in such a way that, when played by different transposing instruments, differing notes result, though the effect is one of thickened unison rather than true harmony. (Sort of resembles the heterophony of music in various cultures such as the Andes or Indonesia.) As this melody treads onward, each instrumentalist is given space to improvise over the melody, especially during looped sections where the melody repeats in ostinato fashion. Braxton also allows the instruments to insert phrases and entire sections of music from other earlier Braxton compositions...in effect making Ghost Trance Music the unifier of his nearly forty year career. These interjections of composed and improvised music help to keep the pieces full of variety, while the running eighth notes have an almost shamanistic effect on the listener.
Composition 247 is one of the few that specifies the instrumental ensemble. It is scored for two wind players and Highland Bagpipe. The addition of the bagpipe is probably what made this piece click for me. The bagpipe is tuned in just intonation, while the other instruments are more typically western. As a result, the Braxtonian unison shimmers with overtones and sounds very close to music from shaman cultures, making the connection to earth based traditions that I had a hard time hearing in other music of the genre. The work is an instrumental tour de force, require an astounding amount of circular breathing from all three players. The improvisational skills evidenced by all three players helps make the work build, rather than remain static. And it's overall effect is hypnotizing. I find that when the piece is over, my ears have been buzzed into another place, one that's hard to come back from.
Leo's sound is great, as usual. And the liner notes are clear. They went a long way toward helping me appreciate this genre in Braxton's output. I still think that I would recommend other Braxton albums first for the novice. Ghost Trance Music can still be daunting for people, and it would be a shame for novices to decide that Braxton wasn't for them, just because of one genre. But anyone who is interested in this fascinating composer should tackle this CD. It's a great introduction to his late style. And anything that this composer does is important.
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