Machines are putting people out of work, doing those repetitive (and not-so-repetitive) jobs faster and better, without tiring. In the jazz place, humans needn't worry they'll be replaced, as it's inherently impossible to pre-program a musical 'surprise'. In fact, three recent releases suggest that men and machines are learning to work together, to the benefit of both.
Berlin-based Ignaz Schick imaginatively deploys turntables, samplers and live electronics in a variety of settings, especially duos. Altered Alchemy, a duet with pianist Achim Kaufmann recorded in the winter of 2016, is a generous two-CD set (comprised of 8 tracks averaging 15 minutes in length), which, as the title suggests, shows how the sound worlds-acoustic piano prepared with various implements and battery of custom electronics-collide, blend and transmogrify their creative elements. Here the 'natural' and mechanical materials are not at odds -one never overpowers the other and there is no patent leadership - rather they collectively engender a kind of musical gnosis. Some samples seem familiar (dogs, rain, people murmuring), but most are metaphorical in character: hissings and creakings, whirrs and rumbles, sirens and static-all highly suggestive, few with overt references.
Under the Sun is similar in the sense that it amalgamates the realms of 'acoustica' and electronica through spontaneous improvisation, different because it is four musicians performing live. Led by Rafael Toral, who plies a handheld controller (akin to those used by gamers) to exhort acoustic and electronic feedback from his amp, the Space Quartet also has bassist Hugo Antunes, drummer/percussionist Nuno Morão and Nuno Torres, who switches between alto saxophone and electronics, thereby shifting the electronic-to-acoustic ratio between 1:3 and 2:2. A pair of 20-minute pieces were recorded in October 2019 in Portugal, the title track at ZDB in Lisbon, "Beneath the Moon" at Teatro Viriato in Viseu. Toral's approach to electronic synthesis (complemented by Torres') is notable for his juxtaposition of vocalistic tones evoking the cries of feral beasts with overtly robotic tones reminiscent of Star Wars droid R2-D2.
In spite of their almost 40-year association, A Mountain Doesn't Know It's Tall is the first duet record by Ikue Mori and Fred Frith, the former featured on laptop electronics, the latter on guitar and home-made instruments and found objects (including "toys"). If the alchemists of the first disc favored epic musical poems, the quartet of the second shorter stanzas, then Mori and Frith are working in the milieu of haiku: terse statements of a minute or two or three, musical pictographs inspired by programmatic titles (or was it the other way around?) such as “Stirred by Wind and Leaves” or “A Thief Breaks into an Empty House". Of the electronic musicians featured here, Mori is perhaps the most abstract, but even her most eccentric gestures are so intimately entwined with Frith's that the two are often indistinguishable.
