stationary |cs141

I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand, it's kind of like a more temperate version of the loud track on "between": rugged, irregular and interesting. On the other, the loudness and ferocity of that piece was part and parcel of its power and here, there's a restraint (which, of course, I normally admire) that seems a bit misplaced. I wanted to hear them more unleashed. Not at all bad though, and I can imagine this growing on me over time. Brian Olewnick (Just Outside)

Stationary (cs 141) lässt mich dann wieder zwischen Zweifeln und Überdruss schwanken. TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA mit seinem ominösen No-input Mixing Board und MARK TRAYLE per Laptop suggerieren surrend, schwirrend, brummend, pritzelnd und furzelnd einen künstlichen ‚Bienenstock‘ von ‚Gläsernen Bienen‘ (wie sie Ernst Jünger visioniert hat) oder eine nanotechnoide Ersatz-‚Natur‘, wie sie William Gibson in Virtual Light wachsen ließ. Ich zweifle einmal mehr am Zweck des ganzen Bruitismus, ich bin es überdrüssig, andächtig einer ahumanen Suggestion zu lauschen, die auf mich pfeift und scheißt. Natürlich bin ich egozentrisch, paranoid und selber schuld. Aber wenn ich das Gefühl bekomme, dass mir die Zeit gestohlen wird, bevor ich sie selber verschwenden kann, reagiere ich sauer. Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy)

A near hour of incessantly fizzling activity, laptopian Mark Trayle and no-input mixing board operator Toshimaru Nakamua apply a fastidious concentration on the minutiae of textural and coloristic detail within these unpredictably evolving modules of activity. Both deal in subtle gradations of texture, dynamic, and harmonic interval, moving from slow glacial slides of tone to static pops and sibilant blasts. While extremes of loud and soft is something of a cliche of such new music, the duo here telescope the material into a detailed middle ground, where everything resounds like the different browns and reds in a Rothko. Trayle nudges melodic intervals away from equal temperament into a spectrum of micro-intervals, and Nakamura deals lucidly with finer tones, playing with a coolly objective approach that suits the material well. This results in a series of compositions that are both enigmatic and deadpan and expansive and elongated.
The disc opens with an opaque stream of grey static, gurgling and retching. It is initially entirely impervious to any manner of decipherment, but is gradually opened up to a subtle phrasing of expansive and contraction, which becomes ever more explicit on the other two works presented here. At nearly half an hour in length, the rubberized tones and bristling static of the second composition are at once controlled and stable and yet white-knuckled and high-strung, oscillating with ease from a surprisingly deep calm to modest blasts of thick sonic mud. In this way the sound palette constantly upsets itself while remaining consistent and orderly enough to sustain interest. The final work is even more of a winding aural road trip that travels from dripping coats of sheen to whining static emissions and clouds of chopping noise and billowing aural dust. In packing potentially common gestures into short durations, the work becomes spidery and well incised, and contributes to the albums obliquely communicative nature. Max Schaefer (The Squids's Ear)

No-input mixing board, laptop. What else? One of those cases in which I knew exactly what to anticipate, and that expectation was more or less fulfilled. Not that this automatically spells “masterpiece”, but the work is solid enough to keep the level of my appreciation quite high throughout. Profusion of pressure and dynamic shifts, infected frequencies alternated with harmonically challenging compartments, quavering purrs abruptly interrupted and replaced with frying pans full of venomous bubbling oils, ever-intelligible juxtapositions of components that generate a curious mixture of glacial impassiveness and sizzling rupture. Apparently not causing the growth of significant excrescences in this listener’s psyche, this CD is effective as a sheer account of a process whose results are not necessarily to be considered “music”. Well planned, diligently realized, structurally complex yet not overwhelming. The right adjective is perhaps “impartial”. Fans of this genre can proceed with the purchase without further considerations, bearing in mind that Stationary is not at the same altitudes of the very best in which the Japanese membrane-masseur has been involved. Birds around here seem to like it, though. Massimo Ricci (Temporry Fault)

Z kilkunastu cd jakie cze³sto dostaje³ od Ernesto Rodriguesa z Creative Sources recs Stationary na którym wyste³puja³ Toshimaru Nakamura - no-input mixing board Mark Trayle - laptop podoba?o mi sie³ najbardziej Bez wejs´ciowy mikser Nakamury, który solo nie dostarcza mi zbyt duz²o emocji w po?a³czeniu z kaz²dym innym instrumentem sprawdza sie³ s´wietnie, na tej p?ycie z Markiem Trayle na laptopie. Na szcze³scie dla Nakamury takie kolaboracje w jego wydaniu zdarzaja³ sie³ cze³sto w kaz²dym z przypadków kiedy trafiaja³ sie³ takie narze³dzia jak wyz²ej wspomnia?em moge³ mniej wie³cej sie³ spodziewac´ czego oczekiwac´. W przypadku Stationary trudno mówic´ o jakims´ wyja³tkowym dziele sztuki, ale ca?os´c´ broni sie³ solidna³ struktura³, dynamicznymi zmianami nastroju i poziomem ogólnym w sensie jakos´ci.
Mamy tu i sytuacje gdzie cze³stotliwos´c´i grze³zna³ w powolnych drganiach a czasem przywieraja skwiercza³co do powierzchni rozgrzanych fal nate³z²enia. Dla fanów drone'owych improwizacji. Astipalea Records (Felthat)

Well after writing last night’s post, which told of the lovely meal we ate, I went to bed feeling quite at one with the world. About two hours later though I awoke with violent stomach pains that lead to spending most of the night hunched over the toilet bowl depositing the aforementioned meal into the Thames Valley sewage system. I wasn’t well at all over night, and this morning when I should have been getting up early for work I didn’t have the strength to stand up. I finally went into work at midday as I had a meeting to attend and I don’t like being beaten, but as I sit here now this evening I’m still pretty weak and washed out, so excuse me if this post isn’t the greatest.
Tonight I listened to the next disc on the Creative Sources pile, a duo CD named Stationary by Mark Trayle, an American laptopper I wasn’t familiar with before, and Toshimaru Nakamura, a no-input mixing boarder that I am very familiar with indeed. This CD has been held up in certain internet forums as an example of a CD that perhaps should not have been released, but perhaps that Toshi may have felt obliged in some way to sanction its issue having had his trip to America to record the CD paid for. Clearly I have no idea how often Toshi says no to CD releases but I think its poor form to suggest that he did not consider this music worth putting out but still allowed it to happen. Especially seeing as he mastered the disc before release. Such a suggestion is an insult to all concerned, and has probably been made partly because the disc has appeared on Creative Sources, a label incorrectly seen as to have poor standards, releasing anything as long as the musicians pay for it. My ongoing investigations of the label’s recent batches of music has shown me that the quality is more often high than it is low, so however rigorous the selection process may be (I really don’t know) it doesn’t too do a bad job at all. Stationary isn’t Toshi Nakamura’s very best work, this is true, but it certainly isn’t a bad album and I’m pleased I have heard it. There are three tracks, lasting ten, twenty-eight and seven minutes each. Nakamura and Trayle’s sound world’s are often not that far apart, very quiet and subtly subdued for much of the album. There is the sense of great concentration here, both of the mental kind and of the physical, as the output of each musician often feels condensed into small understated gestures. Toshi is the most active, his simmering, burbling feedback increasing and decreasing in activity from time to time, with Trayle’s sounds held back to little pops and crackles, with the occasional hum and whistle here and there. In places both do cut loose for brief moments however, Nakamura in particular allowing sudden surges of grainy feedback to spew forth, but these are often cut short quickly. The last ten minutes of the second piece in particular see each musician exchange grungy intervals and momentary pikes, but things always fall away into muted near-silence quite quickly. If the album fails at all it may be through the sense of hesitance it presents the listener with. While often restraint is a powerful tool, particularly in this area of music using electronic instrumentation, where a slight twist of a dial can suddenly change the music dramatically into a completely different beast Stationary maybe feels a little too subtle, a little polite. If in its more beautiful moments the delicate structures resemble Bernhard Günter’s early work, I also question how much could be improved with a little controlled aggression applied, a bit of meat on the slithery bones of the music. It could be my objective take on the music, but Nakamura does seem to push Trayle here and there, nudging him towards less safe areas, and often interesting passages in the music develop, but perhaps not often enough. Still, Stationary is a good listen, and an interesting conversation. The combination of feedback and digital synthesis works well, something we haven’t heard much from Toshi recently as his preference has been towards duos with acoustic musicians. Its nice to listen closely and try and work out the personalities involved in the music, are we listening to harmony or argument? Stationary clearly won’t top many people’s end of year lists (the fact it came out last year doesn’t help this) but it would be a shame if it was cast aside as irrelevant, which it certainly isn’t. Richard Pinnell (The Watchful Ear)

Z kilkunastu cd jakie cze³sto dostaje³ od Ernesto Rodriguesa z Creative Sources recs Stationary na którym wyste³puja³ Toshimaru Nakamura - no-input mixing board Mark Trayle - laptop podoba?o mi sie³ najbardziej
Bez wejs´ciowy mikser Nakamury, który solo nie dostarcza mi zbyt duz²o emocji w po?a³czeniu z kaz²dym innym instrumentem sprawdza sie³ s´wietnie, na tej p?ycie z Markiem Trayle na laptopie. Na szcze³scie dla Nakamury takie kolaboracje w jego wydaniu zdarzaja³ sie³ cze³sto
w kaz²dym z przypadków kiedy trafiaja³ sie³ takie narze³dzia jak wyz²ej wspomnia?em moge³ mniej wie³cej sie³ spodziewac´ czego oczekiwac´. W przypadku Stationary trudno mówic´ o jakims´ wyja³tkowym dziele sztuki, ale ca?os´c´ broni sie³ solidna³ struktura³, dynamicznymi zmianami nastroju i poziomem ogólnym w sensie jakos´ci.
Mamy tu i sytuacje gdzie cze³stotliwos´c´i grze³zna³ w powolnych drganiach a czasem przywieraja skwiercza³co do powierzchni rozgrzanych fal nate³z²enia.
Dla fanów drone'owych improwizacji. Astipalea Records (Felthat Reviews)

A pure representation of what can be done with less, Toshimaru Nakamura has got an incredible amount of mileage out of the simple innovation of plugging a mixer into itself. Much of that is due to his ability to find complementary collaborators with whom to improvise. This recording with Los Angeles-based sound artist Mark Trayle is another example of the fruits of such precise interactions.
With Trayle on laptop, the duo create a suite of three contemplative performances, each rich with an interplay between fine, sinuous, high-pitched tone and a thick, grounded granularity. These two layers share a beautiful lightness, despite their origins in machine and software feedback. The pleasure in listening to this type of music is the pure articulation of textured sound that flits into existence and quickly furrows into your ears. This recording delivers an austere bounty of such sound forma, placed elegantly in a remarkable blend of two focused artistic imaginations.
In contrast, Basque musician Miguel A. Garcia’s album of solo mixing-board compositions creates a hermetic and minimalist soundscape. The intensely fragile sounds that he coaxes out of his board require very close listening to catch all the subtle details. This is also the album’s one drawback, as the occasional sudden increases in volume can cause painful transitions. If you attune yourself to the vagaries of volume inherent in the album, you find a beautiful series of compositions that reflect a very different approach to Nakamura’s, despite the similarities of instrumentation. Chris Kennedy (MusikWorks)

Bringing to mind the old saw about the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, Japanese no-input mixing board manipulator Toshimaru Nakamura and Californian laptoppist Mark Trayle create two medium-length and one extended in-the-moment improvisations here that are as discordantly abrasive as they are sequenced and spacious. A former guitarist (Nakamura) and an electronic composer of chamber and dance pieces (Trayle) they create something unique when the patches, routines and protocols extracted from Tayle’s computer are enhanced with the sonic signals produced by Nakamura’s mixing board which emits sounds despite its inputs being un- connected to any external sound source.
No respite is offered to the queasy ear from sonic pulsations that encompass split-second glitches, ramping pulses, undifferentiated opaque drones, fortissimo grinding, buzzing static and disassociated clicks and squeaks. Either the listener remains stationary and accepts the results or rejects them absolutely. Those that follow the later path however, will miss the spectral logic that actually informs the CD’s brutalized discordance.
Contrapuntal and reductionist, the patterned drones, piercing shrills and echoing flanged textures serve a dual purpose. As they delineate individual sound strategies and preferences, they also demonstrate how a cumulative tonal blend can be achieved by intermingling jackhammer-tough rhythms and processed pitches that ordinarily wouldn’t meld.
While anything but lyrical, the unpremeditated polyphony crated confirms that together Nakamura and Trayle have created definitive metal machine music. Ken Waxman (JazzWord)

Avec Toshimaru Nakamura, c’est presque une autre histoire. Ordinateur contre no-input mixing board à trois reprises : malgré les velléités, de part et d’autre, les gestes sont mesurés. A tel point qu’on soupçonne l’électronique de s’être rapidement fondue dans le décor pour mieux sourdre ensuite… à travers les plaintes, fragiles toutes : sifflements, oscillations, crépitements, saturations… La mesure et la précision du duo soignent là une électronique rare, d’un expressionnisme moléculaire plus remarquable encore que celui de Goldstripe. Guillaume Belhomme (Le Son du Grisli)