Vocamov Rites' "Live at They, Who Sound"

Improvisation is ephemeral, and attempts to document it often fail because they neglect to take this into account. When what is presented is a total sensory experience, including not only the sounds being produced but the way they interact with the space and the audience, a mere audio recording cannot suffice. When physical movement ("spontaneous choreography") is added to the performance, a visual record becomes necessary. One thinks of the collaboration between guitarist Derek Bailey and dancer Min Tanaka, released as an LP record titled Music and Dance. The audio document is evocative, capturing the sounds of rain as it causes the roof of a building to partially collapse, but it is by its nature incomplete.

The three performers in Vocamov Rites -- vocalists and multi-instrumentalists Esin Gunduz and Justin Rodriguez-Jones and dancer Paty Lorena Solorzano -- attempt to address this by releasing the record of their March 2025 performance at Houston's Lawndale Arts Center (under the auspices of curator David Dove and his creative music organization, Nameless Sound) as a digital download with accompanying video. Live at They, Who Sound -- out April 9 via Bandcamp -- provides a vibrant and engaging model of how such documentation can be effectively accomplished.

Vocamov Rites' set begins with the disembodied voices of all three performers reverberating in the space. On the video, you can see the curious and somewhat disquieted responses of the audience to this first encounter. Gradually, Gunduz and Rodriguez-Jones make their way to their instruments, vocalizing wordlessly as they go, creating passing harmonies and counterpoint, like ghosts moving through resonant space. Gunduz uses air to activate her instruments -- breath to move the reeds on her tremelo and bass harmonicas, a strap attached to her leg to operate the bellows on her harmonium. Rodriguez-Jones balances his synthesizer atop a toy piano and uses it to create drones, pulse, and oscillation, along with snippets of melody.

Solorzano enters the space up the aisle between the rows of seated audience members, exploring boundaries, "rotating the body in all its planes" (to paraphrase the injunction in a Harry Partch title), moving like a marionette riding waves of sound, now stiff and mechanical, now balletic or acrobatic. She mirrors the sound of voices and instruments, even interacts with Gunduz's harmonium at one point. By the time the three performers begin to wind down their conversation, the viewer/listener feels centered and satiated. There's no substitute for being in the room when such an event takes place, but this representation is as close as we can get without traveling back in time and space.

Simon Hanes' "Gargantua"

Photo by Jacob Garchik.

The cognitive scientist David Huron has written that people's emotional reactions to music are driven by our expectations, which in turn are based on our knowledge of music in general, as well as a particular genre or piece of music. Composers can create tension, release, and surprise by toying with these expectations. On his new album Gargantua -- out March 27 on Pyroclastic -- the composer Simon Hanes (a familiar of Lower Manhattan eminences John Zorn and Hal Wilner) confounds our expectations masterfully, but with a more graceful arc than other masters of the collage and quick cut like Zorn and Frank Zappa.

The pieces that make up Gargantua are inspired by the scatological satirical novels of 16th century French author Francois Rabelais, the daunting beauty of the Nordic wilderness, and the primordial myth and potential violence of Hawaii's volcanoes. They are realized by a large ensemble of strong elements: three drum sets, three electric basses, three trombones, three French horns, and three soprano voices. 

The result is a music that fuses the influences of Hildegarde von Bingen and Tibetan Buddhist choral singing, baroque music and edgy modernism, alpine horns and heavy rock. The combination of vocal polyphony (those harmonized glissandos!), low brass, and rock rhythm becomes a whole that is totally unique and deeply spiritual. You can hear the confluence of these elements in the opening "A Series of Waves Tremble in a Sea of Blood," where Tibetan Buddhist texts translated into Italian bump up against texts from Dante's Inferno.

In "Gigantes," a heavy riff and simple major key melody struggle for dominance, finally dissolving into chaos. "The Number of the Beast is 666" is a stately march reminiscent of Zappa during his Grand Wazoo big band period, while on "Submit to the Fabulosity," the singers (later echoed by the horns) scream imprecations at the composer over a disco beat, giving way to the best aural simulacrum of an erupting volcano since Trane's Meditations. "Moirai" has the singers, representing the Fates of Greek myth, singing texts from Dante, Pliny, and Petronius on phenomena -- Hell, volcanoes, and war -- that defy human conception.

The percussion-heavy trance music that begins "Lucifer/Aureum Chaos" has a majestic ritual quality that becomes otherworldly as the voices and horns alternate passages of staccato and long tones. The album closes with a study in contrasts: the simplicity of "I Am" (an old piece re-orchestrated) and the serial complexity of "Hekla 1970." Hanes' brilliantly realized compositions bring us to the brink of an abyss of wonder and terror. Yet another triumph for producer David Breskin, and for the ever-exploratory Pyroclastic label.