‘Renegade Heaven’ represents a welcome return to the rawer, downtown approach of Bang on a Can’s second CD for Sony Classical, ‘Cheating, Lying, Stealing’ (10/96). Cantaloupe Music is an exciting development because it allows Bang on a Can to focus on its own in-house repertoire and not limit itself to what a major international recording company considers to be commercial. Music for Airports (Point Music, 7/98), Bang on a Can’s transcription of Brian Eno’s ambient classic, was a fine album, but it would be a shame if this was the only model for what the All-Stars could safely commit to disc. ‘Renegade Heaven’ sets the record straight in two key respects: its choice of repertoire and its production values. Most of these works are already contemporary classics, and it’s hard to imagine a finer recording of them than the one produced here by Damian LeGassick and Evan Ziporyn, as full in sound as the two Sony Classical albums, but with added grit.
Listening to the disc in sequence is a breathtaking experience. Julie Wolfe’s Believing takes up where her previous work for Bang on a Can All-Stars, Lick, leaves off, but there is something very special, almost mystical, about the second half of the piece with its ecstatic solos for cellist Maya Beiser to the backdrop of the All-Stars’ a cappella singing. Arnold Dreyblatt’s Escalator employs to good effect the same tuning techniques he devised for his own Berlin-based Orchestra of Excited Strings. The unassumingly direct construction of this piece does not prepare you for the powerful effect it achieves when played at a suitably high volume. I Buried Paul is a turning point for Michael Gordon’s impressive output, possibly the key to all his more recent work post-Trance. The unsettling, hazy paranoia of the keyboard solos, the sudden changes of perspective within the piece and, above all, the grinding power of the climaxes are particularly well caught here.
And then, to follow this embarrassment of riches, Glenn Branca’s Movement Within. It was a risky idea of Bang on a Can to commission a work from the composer whose music John Cage considered to be ‘evil’. Yet Branca, an elusive genius at the best of times, did not disappoint. Movement Within is written for six electric instruments specially designed by Branca himself to play his tuning specifications. The design of guitars, harpsichords and organ used here emphasise the upper overtones of each note to the expense of its fundamental to such an extent that even in a live performance it is hard to tell what each individual player is sounding. What you hear instead at very high volumes are ‘combination’ tones that are the sum of the whole ensemble and these can vary massively from performance to performance. Having heard the work live (in the Royal Albert Hall, of all places) I doubted that its very palpable sense of physical danger could ever be captured on a recording. This Cantaloupe recording proves me wrong.
This is a very loud album. I urge you to hear it