Some reviews: [xfxs-1] [xfxs-2] [xfxs-3/4]
xfxs-3/4 Living
Rooms
"On this
two-disc set, part of a trio of recently-released recordings by Swedish
guitarist, improviser and philosopher Christian Munthe, the
presentation is of work within small spaces (hence the title). Each of
the seventeen free improvisations here – for solo guitar, duos
and small groups – is either a home or a small club recording
collected over the past few years, preserving the intimacy of the music
and its surrounding environment. Among Munthe’s cohorts here are
guitarist and electronic artist Anders Dahl, saxophonist Christine
Sehnaoui, flutist Kelly Jones, and bassist Nina de Heney. The music,
most of which is comprised of first-time meetings (in the Company
tradition), ranges from delicate to frightfully absurd, such as the
soul-inflected glossolalia of vocalist Mariam Wallentin who, across two
improvisations on the second disc, ranges from sputters and
high-pitched squeaks to stammering gulps in songlike form as Munthe
accents and spins out broken blues like a cross between early Loren
Connors and Derek Bailey.
In trio with Jones and percussionist Pascal Nichols, gleaming kisses
cut through muted clanks and cantankerous, odd-interval slide in
advancing and receding jangle, eventually joined by Munthe’s
young daughter on percussion and a harmonica-like tuning pipe. These
improvisations are alternately poised and playful, the latter
especially so as young Saga bows a second guitar for sheer sonic
participation as percussion and dad’s playing reach a feverish
burble. John Butcher’s exploration of resonance seems like a
leaping off point for Sehnaoui, whose language is a thin mixture of
chuffs, globular chunks and piercing minor explosions. One would think
that the spiky rhythms of Munthe’s guitar and their clearer
instrumental origin wouldn’t fit with her playing, but these
oppositional sound-shapes create a goaded dialogue. Throaty lyricism is
immediately present in de Heney’s pizzicato bass as
Munthe’s bunched actions generate sparks and miniature hum on
disc one’s “Flat Out.” Clarinetist Alberto Poppolla
engages an Ayler-esque form of glossolalia in the three homemade duets,
sometimes warbling in staccato pops as Munthe fills space with
directly-applied clatter. Living Rooms provides an excellent
introduction to some of the finer European improvisers you’ve
probably never heard - most importantly, at “play.”" Clifford Allen, Ni
Kantu, 2011-04-20.
"There are
artists who unfold their musicianship on the world’s stages.
There are also those that keep to home most of the time. I usually
argue that musicians need to get out and scuffle themselves with
others around the world. I still think so. But that is no panacea. For
there are those
who are so occupied with their "big" artistry that they lack an ear
for the others - or even for themselves, really. Continuously, I
discover examples of ”small” artistry. No large gestures,
no solos
aimed at seducing the audience - but in the end appear vague traces in
the sand that prove to be unlike any others.
To
suddenly look back and discover, that is a joy. Turning one’s
head to the side and watch how the present looks different than you
thought, that is as close to the listener's ecstasy one can get. That
has been my relation to Christian Munthe for a great many years. An
improvising guitarist loaded with experiences from Derek Bailey and
British Impro, filled with a wayward energy. A man filled up with
glowing acetylene gas. And in addition completely satisfied with the
mere artistic challenge. No gestures, no waving your limbs around and
no drastic conjectures. Only music that relates itself to other music
and that is based in an approach of continuous questioning and
reasoning.
This
double album is typical. Recorded in private settings. No ambition to
have a thousand people in the audience. This is about something else.
Something artistically more important. There is a lot of Munthe’s
guitar here, breakneck, stumbling, sometimes in a mixture of farce and
Beckett. The choices are impossible. A clear direction would be
ridiculous. Therefore, the decision of the moment is the more
important.
The
opening solo on CD2 has all of this. He exposes himself, drives
gestures and the lack of gestures into a corner. Munthe is not
skeptical in an obedient way. The aesthetic of questioning rather
resembles the line suggested by a tripping wire. To fail is a personal
statement, harboring enormous amounts of energy.
These two
CDs present a series of musical encounters between Munthe and other
improvisers. They are all like unreserved love affairs. The momentum is
just as passionate as it is intrusive and critical. I love the two
meetings with double bass player Nina de Heney. She is buffing and
pushing at him with a flowing mixture of sharp dissonances and the rich
sounds of the bass. In both cases, the result is a brilliant bubbling.
The
meeting with Mariam Walentin is a home-cooking that surprises me.
Normally, her voice is always so strong that she must subordinate
herself to it. Here, wonders occur when Munthe has the guitar
ruthlessly cutting away at what the famous singer perhaps would have
desired. And kindly he allows her to land in familiar featherbeds. But
the road up to that point is more than worth a listen. Munthe has a
kind of indifference to the preferences of the others. And if he has
the guitar rattling the blues for Walentin, in the next instant he is
there sabotaging it. She responds with surprise and fall out of the
tracks in a very successful way. Actually, I have rarely heard her as
unpredictably exciting.
A couple
of obvious highlights are the involvements of Christine Sehnaoui.
Unobsequious. Now the sounds can be tasted to their utmost, and many
other duos appear a bit simplistic and conditional in comparison
with Christine’s metallic ignitions of the air. It is staggering
to experience how each accent and timbre of the two instruments touch
each other to result in new parameters. As caresses or lashes of a
whip. As breaths or strangled sounds. Their duo fumbles
itself slowly forward to a final shrill dissonant sigh. And in the
meantime, breath, metal and wood have been cut across each other.
Masterful.
Christine
Sehnaoui finishes the two discs with a solo. What do you say after
that? Would it be possible for the breath to be more electric than
this?" Thomas Millroth, Sound
of Music, 2010-07-02 (Translated from Swedish by Christian
Munthe)
"Sometimes
liner notes makes all the difference when listening to an album. They
often go ignored or are not even present (especially in this brave new
digital world) and reviewers usually don’t mention them. I
can’t remember a time when I have felt the need to mention them
either, but these notes in particular from “Living Rooms”
compelled me:
”...The solo pieces opening each CD are from the first concert I
did after a five year long pause from music due to work and
parenthood.” -- Christian Munthe
This sentence reverberated in me because I recently became a father and
I have taken a (permanent?) hiatus from music making and maybe even
music. I am now able to see more meaning in these recordings than if I
had not read the notes. Some of the music has transformed from mere
improv to something I am living right now. As a whole, that means that
there is more of a connection to the artist than before. Which in turn
manifests itself as a deeper and better listening experience. So why do
I bring this up? Because I feel that artists often miss the point of
liner notes and that the distillation of albums into individual 99-cent
tracks have also obliterated the tradition. Here’s hoping that
others can follow the example set here.
Which then brings me to this review and the overall effect the notes
have had on it. I am not a large fan of improvisation (not to be
confused with jazz improvisation). Often I find the sounds chaotic and
rooted in “obscure art.” This time it was different because
I could hear the creativity and the sound of a re-emergence (or
something close to it). I am not going to claim that this album has
sold me on the genre. But, I can claim that I am seeing it in a whole
new light. In between the chaos there is emotion and creativity (which
is the root of good music). I don’t think this would have
happened if I had not read the notes. They simply set the mood and gave
me a point of reference. Which can be very important in a genre that
usually offers no guideposts or the comforts of a concrete form.
Notes aside, this disc mostly represents Christian Munthe exploring the
guitar and bringing out new musical possibilities. His guitar playing
often reminds me of picking and at other times his sound is simply his
own. Nothing is static too long and the sounds build upon themselves
into mysterious patterns that beckon you to follow. But the music
isn’t all solo introspection. Several of the tracks bring in
other players who compliment what Christian is doing. These tracks
offer a change in instruments (some of which are unexpected) and an
expansion of the emotions being channeled.
However, I am still lost in the din of the sonics of these discs.
Sometimes the lack of music (or at least how I perceive it) is too
jarring. Instead of listening to the CD I end up staring at my speakers
trying to understand the noise. In short, it is a good listen but it
isn’t for everybody. So I am recommending this album to people
who are looking for introspective experimental/improvisational guitar
that don’t mind veering off into the undefined. 7/10" Daniel De Los Santos, Foxy Digitalis, 25 August, 2010.
"Munthe is a Swedish guitarist who, I
think it's fair to say, operates in the post-Bailey tradition. I find
that a particularly rough row to hoe, the late Bailey casting a
dauntingly huge shadow. "Living Rooms" is a disparate collection of
performances, on 2 discs, recorded more or less in living rooms. Each
leads off with a short solo piece but the remainder are collaborations.
For myself, the success of the music here tends to rise or fall
depending on these partners as Munthe's playing, at least as
represented here, is pretty consistent. Though it's not really my
cuppa, his scrabbling approach is able enough. So while I found Alberto
Poppoia's clarinet work to be tiresome and overly idiomatic, I enjoyed
Rachael Wadham's "cither.bow.things" very much, the pair of stringed
instruments blending well and imaginatively on the final two cuts of
Disc 1.
Three of the tracks on Disc 2 feature
altoist Christine Sehnaoui including, interestingly, closing the album
with a solo performance by her. I've still yet to hear something by
Sehnaoui in a collaborative mode that's really moved me, but the solo
piece here is fairly strong, especially the pinched tones that she
still manages to infuse with air--very nice. My free vocal tolerance is
admittedly low and I didn't derive much from the two tracks with Mariam
Wallentin. My favorites on this disc are the three pieces by the
quartet of Munthe, Kelly Jones (flute, pipe, percussion), Saga Munthe
(guitar, pipe, percussion) and Pascal Nichols (drums, percussion); it's
busy and scrabbling, yes, but the colors create a very vibrant field,
relegating any fussiness to the wayside." Brian Olenwick, Just
Outside, 2010-05-08
xfxs-2 Christian Munthe: 12 Songs
"12 Songs, in this context, is a
fitting complement to the 21st century picture of Munthe, the guitar
player. here, he has cleared his throat, turned on the light and
brought the guitar back to its common position. It is a return to
string playing and a more (if such cursing in the church of
improvisation may be allowed) “classic” free improvised
guitar, even if Derek Bailey is actually not my obvious reference in
this case. Occasionally, the playing that plunges out of the speakers
is very fast, layered with interrupted or just commencing chords that
stumblingly spurt fragments of something that at a distance might be
taken for a blues. Or, rather, if someone had said blues, I would
probably not have heard it – but when no one mentions blues,
oddly enough, I’m hearing it." Johan Redin, Nutida
Musik, No. 2, 2010. (Translated
from Swedish by Christian
Munthe)
"'12 Songs', a collection of brief
improvisations on acoustic guitar, is on the whole my favorite of the
three releases. While one would still be more or less forced to apply
the label "post-Bailey", there's something of an extension in play as
well. Too, it's an extension of the Bailey found on releases like "Drop
Me Off at 96th", a more lyrical incarnation as well as being informed
by (as I hear it) everything from acoustic blues to the kitharas of
Harry Partch. The hard-scrabbling approach is still very much in
evidence but the acoustic guitar tempers things a bit, I think,
allowing more lovely resonances to emerge through the spikiness, and
the brevity of the pieces, instead of inhibiting development, feels
just about right, lending an air of the "miniature" that serves as a
welcome focus. Actually, the song I enjoyed the most, "Song no. 7",
abandons the strings entirely, sounding as though a handful of pliant
twigs were struck and rubbed over the guitar body--quite beautiful.
It's a fine disc overall; I'd love to hear further elaborations along
these lines." Brian Olenwick, Just
Outside, 2010-05-08
"This evening I have been listening to
one of three CDs kindly sent to me by the Swedish guitarist Christian
Munthe self-released on his *For*Sake label. The disc I have been
spinning is a CDr wrapped in a home printed sleeve that makes use of
what must be the worst typeface I have seen in a good few months, but
I’m here to write about the music not the sleeve art…
The disc is called 12 Songs, and
features a round dozen numerically titled solo improvisations for
acoustic guitar. All are quite brief with the longest still coming up
short of five minutes in length. The first thing that hits you when the
album begins, and it hits you very hard, is the stylistic similarity to
Derek Bailey’s later acoustic playing. While I would never have
mistaken the CD for something of Derek’s, its not that close, the
influence is clearly there. On the majority of the tracks Munthe seems
to work hard to squeeze as many sounds in as possible, so they tumble
and pour from his guitar as fast as his fingers will allow. So we get a
stream of often seemingly disconnected notes and plucks and scrabbles
flying forth, and on some of the tracks, such as Song no.6 the
sensation is quite exhausting, particularly as the guitar has been
recorded up very close as the sounds seem to almost attack you after a
while. Headphone listening, as I have been doing for the last couple of
spins tonight have been quite demanding. Relief comes straight after
though, as Song No.7 seems to leave the strings alone completely (its
the only one of the twelve pieces here to do this) and instead the body
of the instrument is scraped, rubbed and frantically flailed at with
some kind of unidentified object while being captured by an attached
pick-up of some kind. This piece is nice, something of a calmer pool in
the midst of the string attacks.
In many ways there is something very
simple and charming about this music that sits very well with the
Bailey comparison. Without stating the obvious, this really is just
Munthe and his instrument very loose and free in the moment, riffing in
a very fluid manner. he does choose particular styles and shapes for
each piece however, and often they veer some way from Bailey, so this
is clearly Munthe’s voice speaking. Perhaps, in a similar way to
how anyone playing a piano very slowly reminds me of Feldman anyone
playing an acoustic guitar fast reminds me of Bailey, which is
undoubtably unfair, but I can’t really help it. My favourite
track here, perhaps unsurprisingly is the one that is the slowest and
more spacious; Song no.11. While not exactly Taku Sugimoto this piece
is allowed to breathe far more than the other tracks are, and if there
is one thing I would have preferred from the disc overall it is a
little more negative space to frame the sounds within. This piece feels
like a Franz Kline painting is a room full of Jackson Pollocks…
Its hard to think of much more to say
here about this music. Its one for acoustic guitar fans, one for those
that like their improv busy and expressively talkative. Its not bad at
all either, a sound enough listen with a few very nice moments
scattered throughout. Maybe if I want to hear a CD or solo acoustic
guitar improv in the future I would be looking on the M shelf for it
first, but that is not to say that there isn’t a good deal to
offer here. One of the other CDrs Christian sent is a double disc set
of duo improvisations, which I am very much looking forward to playing,
as I suspect with a little more room added for others’ inputs
Munthe’s guitar work could be very nice indeed." Richard
Pinnell, The Watchful Ear,
2010-06-02
"Sure, there is a Derek Bailey hiding between the lines in Munthe's
improvisations on the acoustic guitar. The twelve songs on 12 Songs is
more or less awkward, fragmentary, bustling, atonal, slitting and
spatting. But apparently Munthe a somewhat different approach than
Bailey. Where Bailey broke off when approaching a context, Munthe is
able to continue. There are glimpses of structures behind the short and
impulsive inspirations.
But, perhaps, what I marvel at most is the large element of blues.
"Song No. 4" is one of the most telling examples. The offensive
rhythms, the blue tones, the phrasings, how tonesthe notes are bent;
the feeling is that of the blues and the performance is good with a
crude and primitive attack. Here ,Munthe finds himself in a context;
the otherwise so volatile music hovers, investigates.
"Song No. 6" lacks much of the blues feeling, but relies equally on the
rhythm. Successfully, Munthe attacks a high and dense tempo, is ahead
himself! Blatantly and intermittently it’s swinging.
The songs are between two and five minutes long. I like that they are
so short. One is thrown into them, one is ejected. On most of the
tracks, Munthe manages to sustain my interest, on some it declines. But
that is the nature of improvised music." Magnus Nygren, Sound
of Music, 2010-07-02. (Translated
from Swedish by Christian
Munthe)
"I will never be deprived of idea that the earth is flat. Flat as a
guitar, so to speak. As that of Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Keith
Rowe – or of Christian Munthe, who recently self-produced these
12 Songs.
With less of intellectualism than Bailey, less of madness than
Chadbourne and less of electricity (there is litterally none) than
Rowe, the Swede cooks up twelve songs which are not, in fact, there...
Simply because these "songs" are twelve improvisations which do not
turn back in a circle, that never return to a refrain or a chorus. The
music having sound as melody, or a melodicity that is always audible,
Munthe manages well enough to produce vocations. Just listen and
realize that what it sings is the experiment. And, in addition, that
the earth is flat." Pierre Cécile, Le Son du Grisli, 2010-07-27.
xfxs-1: Christian Munthe: Blowing
the Wind: 11 Etudes for the Archtop Acoustic Guitar
"This first release on Munthe’s
own label is his strongest one so far, from a musical point of view as
well as in terms of testing the outer limits of the concept of a
guitar. He has comprehensibly explored the backside – so why not
the inside? The guitar is used exclusively as a wind instrument, where
he, by blowing and breathing into every available opening of the
instrument, elicits startling sounds. Sometimes it becomes comical,
almost moronic as in BTW No. 4,
the snoring in BTW No. 5 or
the panting in BTW No. 10.
But nothing proceeds in want of honesty. If one sets out into regions
of one’s instrument where, I dare to suggest, no one has ventured
before, nothing should be ruled out. The murmurs sometimes turn into a
form of distorsion or sound as the noise of a radio set in between
stations. Had someone played BTW No.
10 to me without telling what it is, I would have guessed on
Christine Sehnaoui-Abdelnour or someone among the brightest glowing
reductionists. As you know, she plays the saxophone and the fact that
the blowing I hear is connected to a guitar can only be viewed as
fantastic – for guitar is what Munthe plays, nothing else". Johan Redin, Nutida Musik, No. 2, 2010. (Translated
from Swedish by Christian
Munthe)
"Nice idea, well executed. Munthe
devotes eleven tracks to sounds made exclusively by blowing on an
acoustic guitar, across its surfaces, through its apertures, around its
strings. So, in a way, it's kind of a "vocal" album, I suppose. As with
his guitar playing (at least to the extent I've heard it), his
respiratory attacks tend toward the active and skitterish, sometimes
incorporating vocalizations. I would have liked to have heard a few
attempts in a quieter, more ruminative vein and also would have enjoyed
at least a couple of lengthier tracks (all eleven here between about
two and five minutes). But I appreciate the relatively spartan nature
of this disc, the self-constraint imposed over its course, and it
succeeds well enough on its own merits." Brian Olenwick, Just
Outside, 2010-05-08
"On The
Back Side Suite from 2008, Munthe used the backside of a guitar
to make music. On Blowing the Wind,
he uses the guitar as a wind instrument! He breathes on it, panting,
blowing, sighing, rubbing his mouth against the body of the instrument,
humming, smacks his lips and who knows what.
He finds himself in a tradition that has grown tremendously strong in
improvisational music in the last decade. Axel Dörner, Andrea
Neumann, Martin Küchen, Ingar Zach, all have expanded their
respective instrument's possibilities. So also Christian Munthe, as he
shows here. But beyond the ingenuity and the ability to actually do
something about exciting ideas rises still some question marks. Does it
hold up to scrutiny? is one of them. Not an entire CD, I say. The
limited expression is exactly that: limited. Even if he succeeds to
vary himself to a great extent, the sounds come back too often.
Still, Munthe manages to produce a lot of exciting sounds from
the guitar. As in the penultimate song in which the laughter sticks in
the throat and is transformed to a sense of claustrophobic panic. You
become afraid that Munthe has locked himself inside the guitar and
can’t get out..." Magnus Nygren, Sound of Music, 2010-07-02. (Translated
from Swedish by Christian
Munthe)
"Guitarist Christian Munthe continues
his exploration of the guitar-as-object on this release, which consists
entirely of sounds made by blowing onto and into an archtop acoustic
guitar. This was always going to be a challenge, as a guitar, even an
acoustic one, isn’t a particularly easy instrument on which to
explore this technique. Munthe seems to have made the best choice with
an archtop acoustic, which has a large body and gives the best chance
of amplifying these kind of sounds. However, it doesn’t have any
particularly tickle areas that would resonate by merely being blown on,
and as the CD goes on, it’s not clear how the particularity of
the guitar itself comes into play—if this could be any other
hollow object, how would the sounds be different? The strings are
nonexistent here, perhaps having been removed—there’s no
attempt (or, at least, success) at getting them to vibrate even
incidentally.
Part of the success of this
project functions on Munthe’s ability to essentially blow in
interesting ways, and he runs the gamut of inhaling, exhaling, and
lip-smacking in the occasional manner of a less menacing C. Spencer
Yeh. He intuitively grasps this need for variation, pulling against an
instrument that isn’t giving him much help, at times pausing in
what could be catching his breath and what could be exasperation. He
sniffs like a dog, breathes through mouth and nose all at once, and
varies the pattern of his breathing, it seems, as much as possible.
There’s a moment in the
second etude where Munthe, blowing hard, accidentally intones just a
bit. It made me hope for a moment in which he would actually vocalize
or sing into the resonant cavity, and that moment comes surprisingly in
the fourth etude, met, like the discovery of the apes in
“2001,” with an almost celebratory crescendo. From then on,
vocalizing appears at times, resembling hushed Tibetan throat singing,
but much of what’s left alongside the blowing is the thwacking
and slurping that keeps in the listener’s mind the extreme
limitations of this exercise. Only in the tenth etude does he try in
earnest to intone—apparently with his mouth closed, with
sometimes unsettling results. After this, the extreme minimalism of the
final track is a welcome coda. 5/10" Travis Bird, Foxy
Digitalis, 4 August, 2010.
