Berlin Heat Wave

David Watson & Tony Buck, Memorials, Heather Stebbins & Ning Yu

I’m writing this as a travel back to Berlin after a visit to the Moers Festival, which I’m reviewing for the Wire. I had little downtime, so this week’s newsletter is comparatively brief.

David Watson’s Wind-Blown Drones

Earlier this month veteran experimental bagpiper David Watson released an unholy racket alongside guitarist Bill Nace with an album called On Bats (Amish). I’ll sheepishly admit that while I knew of Watson for years it’s only recently that I’ve spent time listening to his work. And, naturally, I feel silly for not paying closer attention. I’ve realized how amazing bagpipes can be when it comes to sustained sounds, especially when there’s a lot of activity under the monolithic, piercing drone, so Watson joins my emerging pantheon of radical pipers like Erwan Kerawec and Matthew Welch. Watson, a New Zealander based in New York since 1987, goes head to head with Nace on the new record, a kind of high-volume analog to the latter’s duo with Evan Parker, without the double helix dance. Nace sticks to the taishōgoto, in both two- and five-string formulations, pounding out cycling note patterns that allow his collaborator to alternately drape and pour his seething, molten attack atop and within the furious churn. The album is pretty relentless, an impolite attack that morphs endlessly despite a rather fixed color palette. As you can hear below on “Wishbone,” the pair toy with rhythm and phrasing endlessly, forging a twitchy, garrulous dialogue hidden under the visceral din. Nace tends to provide the lacerating heat while Watson’s bracing trill is relatively soothing in this particular context, yet Watson has no problem starting fires.

While On Bats provided the impetus for me digging further into Watson’s work, I’m writing something about this week because the piper is in town this week, renewing his decades-long partnership with drummer Tony Buck. They perform at KM28 on Tuesday, May 26.

David Watson and Tony Buck

In the summer of 2019 the duo released the stunning duo record ask the axes (Besom Presse), which transmits a radically different vibe. While Watson’s rheumy wail is no less penetrating and spectral in its harmonic splatter, Buck adapts a more reduced stance that carves out a very different space. “Beating,” the first of the album’s two pieces, begins with the piper layering two separate drones, opening up a delicious sea of harmony chock-a-block with the titular effect. Rather than cut into that sonic fabric with aggressive bashing, Buck opens up with the steady, rapidly pulsating presence of a simple shaker before introducing a tom-tom rumble and the chatter of bells that collectively sounds as much like wind-and-rain battered roof than a drum kit. As the piece progresses Watson eventually begins to modulate his attack, altering the timbre and pushing into far more unstable, visceral bleats as the drummer increases his intensity without appreciably altering the quick pulse apart from making it feel wobblier, as if his kit was teetering over the abyss. Check it out below. “Exhale” begins with a string to rising-and-falling press rolls from Buck, before Watson joins in with a sparkling sound that almost sounds like a chorus of harmonicas. Buck slowly pulls back, changing his attack if not the pulsations, giving Watson loads of space to dig into a shuffle of needling patterns and wheezing long tones.

Memorials Mark the Past While Moving in the Present

While I’ve enjoyed their previous record, I haven’t kept close tabs on the music of Memorials—the duo of former Electrelane honcho Verity Susman and Wire guitarist Matthew Simms—but I’ve been having a blast immersing myself in their recently released All Clouds Bring Not Rain (Fire). The combo lands in a 90s indie rock sweet spot, strongly evoking the motoric grooves of early Stereolab, it’s percolating rhythms slathered with electric organ, but the hooky melodies and bring something distinctive and fresh to the proceedings. The tunes all stake out different terrain, whether the delicate folk-like warble of Susman tracing out a delicate melody over a blend of harmonium and reeds on the tender opening track “Life Could Be a Cloud,” at least until that telltale post-Neu! choogle kicks in halfway through, gathering up velocity, density, and urgency as it unfolds. The soft focus harmonies of Susman and Simms also recall the aerated singing of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen without the bubbly chanson ebullience. Instead Memorials place their coyly insinuating melodies within head-nodding hypnosis a la the Velvets.

Memorials—Matthew Simms and Verity Susman (photo: David Masters)

If it’s not clear already, Memorials have developed a sound from very familiar it not deeply comforting elements. But the consistent tunefulness and the varied instrumental palette keeps things lively and seriously absorbing. There’s a lullaby-like vibe to “I Can’t See a Rainbow,” with its autoharp strums, chintzy beatbox rhythms, and a beautufully enchanting melody, all of which blossom into an ambling, meditative trance during its final minute. The off-kilter funk rhythms and ticky-tack guitar patterns in “In the Weeds” recall the kind of irresistible drive of Serge Gainsbourg’s immortal “Requiem Pour un Con,” although Susman’s upper register melody line takes it somewhere else. Memorials embroider each song with new filigree and ornamentation, constantly rejiggering the formula. “Reimagined River” is another ballad, floating on a somber piano progression but when Simms’ vocal harmonies and percussive guitar—the kind of terse, damped tones you hear all over Pet Sounds—quietly enter the fray the complexion and thrust of the song changes. “Mediocre Dream,”which you can hear below, also fucks with funk grooves, layering atop delicious fuzzed-out guitar, sputtering synthes, piles of drum samples, and spell-casting harmonized vocals. Every subsequent song delivers new treats, a pop-psych feast that keeps on ggiving. Memorials play Kantine am Berghain on Monday, June 1.

Heather Stebbins Straddles Electro-Acoustic Practices, Alone with Ning Yu

Baltimore composer Heather Stebbins demonstrated a unique voice with the work she wrote for Switch Ensemble on its terrific 2023 album Roots (New Focus), contributing several visceral electro-acoustic pieces that reveal her mastery at colliding texturally-rich electronics with variably pitched and oddly proportioned acoustic instruments. Listening back to the album several years after reviewing, I was pleased that my high estimation of the work is undiminished. Until recently, though, everything else I heard by Stebbins was purely electronic, occupying various cracks between what sounds like ambient and programmed/algorithmic music. But even in that amorphous space, her music stands out.

Last year’s On Separation (Outside Time) was a model of how ambient music can be much more than anodyne background gloss. While the electronic tones and transfigured real-world sounds—meticulously positioned washes of violin and cello, or a sample of a babbling child—are generally soothing and free of sharp edges, they do much more than float aimlessly. Within each concises piece there’s loads of movement and development. The aptly titled “Sun Flood,” which you can hear below, arrives as a kind of ceremonial opening, with ringing prayer bowl strikes opening up rippling sythetic waves that seem to emanate from the resonance. They swell, radiating a kind of hypnosis that spiral like a kaleidoscope, but Stebbins grabs on to certain resultant threads, zooming in specific little riffs and gestures that take on a life of their own, like the two-note figure that wafts into the picture at the 2:36 mark, pulsating onward until it’s joined by a rhythmic vocal-like gesture, until both evaporate in the closing seconds.

More recently she’s waded back into the world of acoustic instruments through an ongoing project with pianist Ning Yu, a former member of Yarn/Wire who’s also worked closely with composer David Bird, but who is generally known as a peerless interpreter of contemporary music.

Heather Stebbins and Ning Yu (photos: Farrah Skeiky/ Bobby Fisher)

On the pair’s recent album Spirals (Carrier) they collaborated to blur the line between composer and performer, so while Stebbins handles the electronics and Yu plays piano, there was a lot of back and forth in dveloping the amorphous material. As I recently wrote in my monthly Bandcamp column on contemporary music:

Through weekly sessions they’d meet up to experiment and improvise, guided by changing prompts to see where the sounds would take them. Spirals features plenty of compositional gambits—fixed patterns, melodies, and structures, in different proportions depending on the piece. But it totally rejects the conventional composer/performer hierarchy. I can’t say with any certainty what the breakdown of roles is, but on most of the pieces Yu brings her usual gusto and resourcefulness to her playing, expanding her sound through rigorous piano preparations. But in addition to carving out her own purely electronic terrain, there’s also plenty of manipulation of the already transformed keyboard sounds. The skittering piano arpeggios at the core of “Spirals II” are increasingly buffeted and awash in harsh electronic noise, both swallowing and disfiguring the keyboard gestures. Yu’s insistently percussive internal piano gestures on “Hive/Spiral III” are interrupted by extended pauses, as if to allow the electronic manipulations to catch up with her shifting attacks; halfway through she shifts the tones of her staccato gestures, and the electronics dutifully and imaginatively follow suit. What emerged wasn’t a compromise between two visions, but a third thing entirely, something neither of us could have discovered or made alone.

On Wednesday, May 27 at KM28 the duo will play music from Spirals and Stebbins will also perform a solo set.

Short Takes

Two major retrospectives take place this weekend, both of which deserve hefty previews. Alas, current circumstances prevented that from happening, but I do feel the need to point them out in brief. From Thursday, May 28 to Saturday, May 30, KM28 hosts a promising celebration of composer Michael Pisaro-Liu, the key American figure of the year Wandelweiser Collective. The composer will participate in some of the performances, joining a top-flight cast that includes pianist Quentin Tolmieri, clarinetists Katie Porter and Lucio Capece, guitarist Seth Josel, and double bassist Jon Heilbron, among others. Full details on the KM28 website.

The veteran Berlin sound art curator and presenter Carsten Seiffarth marks the 30th anniversary of his Singuhr platform with a variety of installations and performances between Friday, May 29, and Sunday, May 31, at several venues: Parochialkirche, Villa Elisabeth, daadgalerie, and Silent Green. Of particular note are the double-header performances on Saturday, with rare performances bt the likes of Max Eastley, Michael Moser, Paul DeMarinis, Robyn Schulkowsky, and Akio Suzuki. Full details on the Singuhr website.

Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week

May 26: Axel Dörner, trumpet, Cassie Kinoshi, alto saxophone, Nick Dunston, double bass, Toshimaru Nakamura, no-input mixing board, and Raiga Hayashi, drums, 8 PM, Alter Roter Löwe, Richardstraße 31, 12043 Berlin

May 26: David Watson, highland bagpipes, smallpipes, and Tony Buck, percussion, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 27: Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop plays Catherine Lamb’s Divisio Spiralis, 8 PM, Betonhalle, Silent Green, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin

May 27: Potsa Lotsa XL (Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone, Jürgen Kupke, clarinet, Patrick Braun, tenor saxophone, Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet, Gerhard Gschlößl, trombone, Johannes Fink, cello, Taiko Saito, vibraphone, Antonis Anissegos, piano, Igor Spallati, double bass, and Kay Lübke, drums), 7:30 PM, Club der Polnischen Versager, Ackerstraße 168, 10115 Berlin

May 27: Heather Stebbins, electronic, and Ning Yu, piano, play Spirals; Heather Stebbins, solo electronics, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 27: Francesca Remigi, drums, electronics, Ju Ray’m, synthesizers, and Phillipp Gropper, saxophones; Camila Nebbia, tenor saxophone, Nick Dunston, double bass, and Mariá Portugal, drums, 9 PM, Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68, 10245 Berlin

May 28: Skultura (Nick Dunston,bass, banjo, electronics, Cansu Tanrikulu, voice, vocal processor, Liz Kosack, synthesizer, Eldar Tsalikov, clarinet, Mariá Portugal, drums, and Cassie Kinoshi, alto saxophone); Parquet (Seb Brun, drums, electronics, Guillaume Magne, guitar, Nicolas Cueille, guitar Jean-François Riffaud, bass, synth bass, and Simon Henocq, electronics), 8 PM, Kantine am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin

May 28: Ex Tempo-Symbiophilia (Susana Santos Silva, trumpet, Camila Nebbia, tenor saxophone, Pasquale Calò, tenor sax, Lorenzo Colocci, flute/electronics, Samuel Gapp, piano, Vanessa Ferreira, double bass, Rodrigo Girafa, guitar, Bryan Holmes, electronics, and Francesca Remigi, drums), 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)

May 28: Michael Pisaro-Liu: A Retrospective, day 1; Michael Pisaro-Liu, electric guitar, electronics, Jon Heilbron, contrabass, Katie Porter, clarinet, and Seth Josel, electric guitar, play Rhododendron for solo electric guitar and electronics, Mind Is Moving IV for solo contrabass, and asleep, street, pipes, tones (2009) for clarinet, electric guitar, fixed media, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 29: Entropy Hug (Lothar Ohlmeier, bass clarinet, Frank Paul Schubert, soprano saxophone, and Olaf Rupp, electric guitar), with Jorrit Dijkstra, alto saxophone, for set two, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin

May 29: Michael Pisaro-Liu: A Retrospective, day 2; Peter Tracy, cello, Seth Josel, electric guitar, Eric Wong, live electronics, Jessica Gaynor, record player, Michael Pisaro-Liu, spoken voice, Lucie Nezri, spoken voice, Katie Porter, clarinet, Lucio Capece, clarinet, Quentin Tolimieri, piano, and Michael Weilacher, vibraphone, play Interference 1 for cello, electric guitar, live electronics, record player, and moss for spoken voice, 2 woodwinds, piano, vibraphone, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 30: Erwin Stache; Vinyl-terror & -horror; Jens Brand and Sukandar Kartadinata; Max Eastley, 6 PM, singuhr XXX, Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstraße 3, 10115 Berlin

May 30: Michael Moser; Paul DeMarinis; Akio Suzuki and Hiromi Miyakita; Robyn Schulkowsky, 8 PM, singuhr XXX, Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstraße 3, 10115 Berlin

May 30: Michael Pisaro-Liu: A Retrospective, day 3; Michael Weilacher, vibraphone, Joe Kudirka and Ensemble (Lucio Capece, Michael Pisaro-Liu, Federico Pozzer, Ángeles Rojas, and Lucio Tasca) play The Narrow Path for solo vibraphone, Asleep, Forest, Melody, Path for open instrumentation, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 31: Quentin Tolmieri, piano, plays Michael Pisaro-Liu; Claudius; Axel Dörner, trumpet, and Ipek Odabaşı, electronics; Romain C. Berthau, organ, plays Jürg Frey, 6 PM, Taborkirche, Taborstraße 17, 10997 Berlin

June 1: Memorials, 8 PM, Kantine am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin

June 1: Tamikrest, 8 PM, Frannz Club, Schönhauser Allee 36, Kulturbrauerei, 10435 Berlin

June 1: Claire Dickson, vocals, electronics, Halfdan Magnus Stefansson, guitar, and Marius Wankel, drums, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin