drawings |cs130

Guitarrista originário de Chicago, residente em Madison, Wisconsin, EUA, Scott Fields tem estado muito activo, dando forma a uma das mais sofisticadas concepções musicais da actualidade nos domínios do avant-jazz e da música improvisada. Fields traçou para si próprio uma via original, que aponta em direcções diferentes das marcas mais distintamente assinaladas no panorama dos últimos 20 anos. O seu estilo não é o de um guitarrista típico do jazz, tradição que nem sequer bebeu no leite materno. Neste aspecto, e no que ao tratamento das seis cordas diz respeito, a sua fala apresenta mais afinidades com o discurso pianístico pós-Cecil Taylor, a partir do qual as noções de composição e improvisação passaram a misturar-se de forma homogénea. Nos últimos tempos Scott Fields tem investido muito do seu potencial e energia criativa em inúmeros projectos que exploram diferentes ideias, formatos e concepções ligados a outras tantas vertentes da música improvisada, com ligações, ainda que por vezes remotas, ao jazz. Sem contar com This American Life, gravado em quarteto (Scott Fields, Sebastian Gramss, Scott Roller e João Lobo) e editado este ano pela NEOS, Drawings, a mais recente saída de Scott Fields na Creative Sources Recordings (CS130), encontra o artista em plena exposição, como solista e orquestrador. A ideia de gravar este vasto conjunto de miniaturas para guitarra eléctrica Gibson SF-336 (Scott Fields Signature), numa longa sequência em que aparecem ligadas ombro a ombro, nasceu do encontro com o artista plástico alemão Thomas Hornung, no decurso duma residência artística algures nos Alpes Suíços. Depois de observar o processo criativo de Hornung, que desenha linhas finas a carvão sobre papel A4, ocorreu-lhe a ideia de incorporar os desenhos num projecto conjunto com o videasta Arno Oehri, que também tomou parte na concepção. A ideia seria converter desenhos e esquissos numa partitura gráfica, com recurso à rica e variada sintaxe musical que a guitarra eléctrica adquire nas mãos de Scott Fields. Para este projecto, que tomou forma a partir de 2004, das 254 takes inicialmente gravadas, de que permaneceram 171 após triagem, Fields utilizou um conjunto de 98 peças, cuja duração varia entre os 7 segundos e pouco menos de 1 minuto. O fraseado da guitarra, além de breve, é simples e de traço fino e esguio, tal como nos esquissos de Hornung. A edição inclui ainda um vídeo de 55 minutos realizado por Arno Oehri, intitulado 301 Miniaturen. Enquanto obra de arte, no seu conjunto, Drawings acaba por ser uma realização interactiva de três artistas, a partir dos desenhos de um deles. Musicalmente, expõe uma faceta muito interessante e porventura menos conhecida de Scott Fields: o trabalho a solo conceptual sobre as seis cordas electrificadas. Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)

There’s an enhanced CD among the recent releases by Ernesto Rodrigues’ Creative Sources called Drawings. The “enhancement” consists in a 55-minute MP4 video - Der Raum, by Arno Oehri – which shows the working processes between Scott Fields and German visual artist Thomas Hornung, who lives in Basel and spends about one hour every evening by making spur-of-the-moment drawings on A4 paper sheets, “typically in black but occasionally in colored chalk”, as per the guitarist’s words. The three collaborators first met in 2004 during a residency in the Swiss Alps, yet only after a while the American decided to dig out something from those sketches, converting them in a multi-page graphic score whose constitution is better explained by the composer himself in the liner notes. Fields, one of the most interesting phrase scramblers in contemporary jazz also in more “regular” outings (check his efforts on Clean Feed), asks the listeners to play the 98 audio tracks of the disc in shuffle mode - the same method applied to Hornung’s 171 pictures, previously selected, when he performs this work live. This modus operandi is not really crucial for the ultimate result, as the severely fragmentary conciseness of the solos causes the whole to sound exactly as a haphazard reproduction of the initial program even when the record is played straight; I seriously doubt that a remote chance of memorizing this album exists. What needs to be noted is how brilliantly this man manages to conjure up a growing quantity of uncommon timbres, chordal surges, skeletal counterpoints and unclassifiable pitches from his axe (manipulated conventionally or through various kinds of implementations), elevating the music to a degree of consequentiality on a par with its pictographic complement. Massimo Ricci (Temporary Fault)

Scott Fields está a viver um período especialmente criativo do seu percurso, agora ressurgindo em mais uma edição portuguesa. O novo “Drawings” baseia a sua lógica construtiva nos desenhos a carvão de Thomas Hornung. Desenhos criados “impromptu”, levando menos de um minuto a completar, só podiam traduzir-se musicalmente por miniaturas, e assim são 98 as faixas áudio deste CD que contém igualmente um vídeo de 55 minutos no qual os dois artistas apresentam em conjunto as suas artes visual e sonora, com a particularidade de esta última utilizar as figuras da primeira como referência gráfica. Como seria previsível, o Fields que aqui encontramos é menos jazzístico do que o de “Bitter Love Songs”, do Scott Fields Freetet, mas também é verdade que contrasta com os seus discos mais “cerebrais”, como “We Were the Phliks”, “Beckett” e “From the Diary of Dog Drexel”. A bem dizer, este é o disco em que ouvimos o guitarrista no estado mais cru da sua música. Conhecido pelas suas difíceis composições mais do que como instrumentista (circunstância que só começou a mudar recentemente devido aos seus duos com Elliott Sharp), “Drawings” tem a importância de inverter esses termos e de colocar em primeiro plano o excelente improvisador que é este americano radicado em Colónia, na Alemanha. Os esboços de Hornung podem ser entendidos como “partituras” imediatistas, mas o certo é que não impõem mais do que vagas sugestões de estrutura. Desse modo, é o “outro” Scott Fields, aquele que melhor se revela em concerto, que finalmente descobrimos em disco. O curioso é que os pontilhismos dedilhados de outros contextos não se repetem aqui. Distorções vizinhas do rock (fazendo-nos lembrar Sonny Sharrock) e abstraccionismos parasitados (o Derek Bailey da parceria com os Ruins?) é o que nos oferta. Decididamente, Fields está apostado em surprender-nos... Rui Eduardo Paes

[...] The solo record Drawings features Fields the deadpan formalist: 98 tracks in 46 minutes, each using a drawing by the German artist Thomas Hornug as a graphic score. Good luck trying to listen to this in any conventional manner: Fields suggests playing it in shuffle mode, and even within a single track individual sound-events are often sharply discontinuous. Though Fields is happy to draw on jazz and rock idioms, his approach here reminds me of laptop guitar in the Keith Rowe tradition: there’s the same sense of the instrument as a lightning-rod or barometer, an object crisscrossed by momentary flickers of energy. The disc is a Great showcase for Field’s never-the-same-thing-twice inventiveness, ranging from tiny bouquets of shrapnel to choked, spidery fidgetings and wavery hums; I particularly like the spots of string-torture involving a metal comb/bow (you can catch a glimpse of it in the vídeo by Amo Oehri included on the CD). In truth, the disc is sheer agony if you try to approach it like a normal listening experience and pay sustained attention; but there’s plenty of substance to these spiky little quiddities, and if you turn on shuffle Play the track-by-track jumps offer as much of an aural frisson as the music itself. Nate Dorward (Signal to Noise)

German artist Thomas Hornung has the habit of making many quick drawings, most of which he discards, and some he archives. Guitarist Scott Fields made this CD to accompany these drawings and to mimick their creation. The CD consists of 98 tracks, ranging from 8 seconds to 1 minute. In this short period, there's hardly anything to tell, and that's what it sounds like: short snippets of sound, with no apparent sense. Unless this makes sense to you : "Eventually I decided to convert some (as it turned out 171) of his drawings into a multi-page graphic score. To do that I made a matrix of pitch rows and numbers that represent playing techniques. Then I reversed Thomas's drawings so that what was black became transparent. Finally I lead each drawing over the matrix and used what was visible as an element in an extended, modular composition". It is pretty painful that you need to explain all this, and much more, in two pages on the liner notes. In my humble opinion, music is about music, not about some intellectual and cerebral creation. Click on the cover above to see how much notes remain after the "color reversion". The point of this approach totally eludes me. There are about five trillion other ways to organise notes based on external circumstances, most of which are possibly more valuable than the approach taken here. I have no problem that other art forms can generate inspiration for musical evocations, quite to the contrary, but not through such a mechanistic intellectual process. What Fields does, is just to create randomness. There is no link whatsoever between the drawings and his music. And none of the 98 pieces actually has anything to tell. They're just a few sounds on one or several strings. Less interesting than a bee buzzing around your head. The good news is that "I had 254 takes, 171 of which I kept (...), a month later I culled the 171 acceptable takes down to 99, one for each track possible on the CD". We were saved from listening to a triple CD. (Free Jazz)

A series of 98 composition inspired by the drawing of a swiss artist called Thomas Hornung, Scott Fields used the drawing to elaborate a score, but obviously it's really complicated to be described in a review, but believe me if you read the line notes you find it damn interesting. This electric guitar based recording is nothing but a collection of fragments, none of the tracks goes beyond fifty seconds. If we had just to consider this record for the music, this could be one of those odd works by Bailey or Frith even if Fields is less clean and in an intentional way. Both distorted and clean tracks shows despite his technical skill Fields is a soulful musician that with a releases like that is not to be taken for granted. This ghostly materials probably feels really good with the original drawing or maybe that just my personal suggestion. The video here included in this cd shows wonderfully what this all work is about. Andrea Ferraris (Chain DLK)