Following the partial eclipse of traditional modernism, new forms of new music are currently being welcomed into mainstream concert-halls and on to mainstream labels after the obligatory spell on the fringes. New York’s Bang on a Can Festival has been purveying a uniquely challenging species of ‘crossover’ since the mid-1980s. And even now, despite the change of locale and label, the heady Andriessen-inspired stylistic mix can scarcely be described as easy listening. CD presentation is pop rather than classical in orientation, with the kind of sizzling, close-miked sound traditionally reviled by Gramophone reviewers. The All-Stars, who are highly amplified and carefully mixed in concert, come across here as a fiercely aggressive group, combining the power and punch of a rock band with the precision and clarity of a chamber ensemble. The individual pieces cover a considerable idiomatic range but share the minimalist fascination with repetitive, gradually evolving structures. Rhythm is constant and vital, melody and harmony either stunted or non-existent.
The programme kicks off with Julia Wolfe’s Lick – sensibly enough as it’s the most approachable work on the disc. In a surprisingly affectionate tribute to the rock music of her youth, Wolfe toys with the expectations of the genre with considerable formal cunning; and no one could deny the extraordinary panache of the playing. The Andriessen compositions lack any comparable lightness of touch. This is not to deny that they matter. They articulate in purest form the seminal impulse behind the other music here, remaking the static, consonant (self-satisfied?) sounds of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and the rest into a vehicle of protest – edgy, jarring and Angst-ridden. But I won’t pretend that I found them all that rewarding to listen to. Hout and Hoketus are as severe in their canonic processes as any of Reich’s early phase pieces, and their halting angular ideas evoke the back streets of some dark and impenetrable urban jungle (possibly best left unexplored). Is there another composer who would think of obtaining a monolithic sonority from panpipes and saxophones over acoustic and electric pianos with bass guitars and a conga rhythm?
Of the remaining pieces, David Lang’s The Anvil Chorus is literally heavy metal, with percussionist Steven Schick walloping steel pipes and ‘non-resonant junk instruments’ in a freewheeling display of virtuosity; the sounds are occasionally reminiscent of Japanese Noh Theatre. I was rather more taken with Michael Gordon’s Industry, the final work on the disc. An unconventional display piece for electronically treated cello, it takes a simple, rather haunting chordal sequence, vaguely redolent of Schnittke, and distorts it, fuzz-guitar-like, to epic proportions. Comparison has been drawn with Jimi Hendrix’s Star-spangled Banner, but the effect here is sombre and dark, anything but celebratory. Rather than developing his material, Gordon subjects it to dehumanizing industrial process. “I had this vision of a 100 - foot cello made out of steel suspended from the sky, a cello the size of a football field.” Those who prefer the cello to sound like a cello had better steer clear.
Like it or not, this disc makes an impressively cogent, individualistic statement. The music certainly isn’t subtle: it’s a bruising assault on the soothing, pseudo-spiritual escapism of the Holy Minimalists on the one hand and the excessive, barely-heard complexities of the Modernist Old Guard on the other. The results are technically outstanding but definitely not for the faint-hearted.'