I believe someone here inquired about this... here's a press release I
received this evening. It's coming out in a few weeks, I guess - New World's
distributors usually hit the stores on the third Tuesday of the month.
Steve Smith
ssmith36(a)sprynet.com
Tim Berne
The Sevens
New World 80586-2
ARTE Quartett; Tim Berne, alto saxophone; Marc Ducret, acoustic guitar;
David Torn, electric guitars, loops, sonic redistribution
The Sevens is Tim Berne's most explicitly "compositional" statement in some
time. The album's core, a pair of through-composed movements performed by
the ARTE saxophone quartet, could serve as an apotheosis of Berne's chamber
writing. "Repulsion" features four melodies (or is it one melody in four
voices?), variously in dialogue or in chorus. Moving through a range of
tonal colors, the piece reflects both Berne's fondness for friction and his
less-celebrated sensitivity. In fact, certain sections sound almost wistful,
as Berne cloaks his dissonances in subtle shadows.
In "Quicksand," the centerpiece of the album, the ARTE Quartett is joined by
Berne and Marc Ducret, both of whom provide improvised commentary above and
around what's on the page. Here, in one piece, is a fulfillment of the
yin-yang ethos inherent in Berne's work, the tensile balance between
composition and improvisation.
On The Sevens, the process of interpretation assumes several different
shapes. First, there's the conventional notion of improvisation on a theme.
Then there's the subtler way in which Ducret personalizes the solo
miniatures "Sequel Why" and "Sequel Ex"--two fairly divergent takes of the
same hauntingly pretty song. Finally, there's the more radical manner of
interpretation seen in "Reversion" and "Tonguefarmer"-both of which are the
product of studio manipulation at the hands of guitarist/programmer David
Torn. This last procedure, a collaborative effort, stretches the bounds of
"composition" in clearly contemporary ways. "Reversion," the first of these
pieces, is essentially a remix of "Repulsion," with significant
modifications. "Tonguefarmer," the second of Torn's remixes, is essentially
a palimpsest consisting of successive layers of exposition.
For Berne, The Sevens, with its various interpretive assignations, was
"probably the hardest one to make, of records I've made, in a long time."
For an artist steeped in self-jurisdiction, surrendering even a portion of
the product can be a terrifying prospect. Which is exactly why he did it.
"Whatever the thing is that I'm least secure with, I tend to want to expose
that and face it, in a way." Accordingly, The Sevens ultimately resembles
neither his eighties albums nor the live recordings of the nineties-instead
defining a new Tim Berne paradigm, an uncertain but surprisingly smooth
continuum expressing what the composer calls "unity through contrast."
