Haptic
Trebuchet CD (E75)
A trebuchet is a medieval siege engine. Trebuchet is a humanist
sans-serif typeface. A trebuchet is an instrument of punishment
consisting of a chair in which offenders were ducked in water.
Trebuchet is the title given by Marcel Duchmap to the readymade
sculpture that he created by nailing a coat rack to the floor of his
apartment. Trebuchet is an endgame position in chess in which
whoever is the first to move will necessarily lose the game.
Trebuchet is performed by Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills,
and Adam Sonderberg. This is Haptic recording number seven.
Made in Chicago.
See also Haptic
First edition of 300 copies
£8
Left to right: Mills, Hess, Sonderberg
Containing just three tracks (the second and third of which are
entitled Three and Four — pick up a copy of The Medium if you
want to find One and Two), or rather two with a tantalisingly
brief intro, as the opening Counterpoise disappears frustratingly
after barely three minutes, it could be Haptic’s most accom-
plished release to date. The title could refer to anything from
a medieval siege tower to a ducking stool, a Marcel Duchamp
readymade to an unwinnable position in a chess game, and how
the music cunningly blends acoustic and electronic instruments
and field recordings is just as hard to figure out. Richard Pinnell,
over at The Watchful Ear [see below] wonders what the sound
of a children’s playground in the final seconds of Four might
signify. I haven’t the faintest idea myself, but it’s a magical
ending to a most impressive album.
Dan Warburton in Paris Transatlantic
—
This Chicago trio specialises in a sustained electroacoustic tac-
tility, drawing out the details from field recordings, found object
manipulation and electronics into long-form passages grounded
upon a drone foundation. Over the first half of the record, the
ensemble slowly peels back the layers of gravelly texture, evolv-
ing towards a single pure tone. By the end, wiretapping hiss and
the artefacts from electrical field disturbances bristle above a
low-end concoction of rumbling environmental din and the sus-
tained decay from the rattle of a large piece of metal.
Jim Haynes in The Wire
—
For a group that was originally conceived as a vehicle for improv-
isation and live collaboration with invited fourth parties, the local
electroacoustic trio Haptic has adapted quite well to more perma-
nent formats. Not only is it hard to tell what’s played, what’s
processed, and what’s an environmental field recording on their
new album, Trebuchet, it’s really beside the point. The music is
in constant flux, so that by the time you think you’ve identified
a sound it’s already changed, but it’s so marvelously tactile you
don’t want to let it go; Four, the disc’s third track, feels like a
warm blanket woven from wool, radiator hiss, and radio static.
Bill Meyer in the Chicago Reader
—
(First track] Counterpoise is a miniature of soft, organ-like tones
with subtle thuds and minimal percussive patter, very enticing and
sadistically ended at 3'16". For shame. [Second track] Three varies
most widely from previous Haptic material I’ve heard though it’s
not so far away — the texture is thinner than the normal porridge,
the sounds more gaseous. The earlier track rather resembles
previous Haptic work; more of the same, in a way, but their ‘same’
is very good: deep rumbles, dense eddies, the implied throb, the
punctured steam vents, the escaping magma. Although it’s my
favourite piece here, I might have rather heard something at this
level of more recent vintage. Minor carp, though; another fine
release from these fellows.
Brian Olewnick at Just outside
—
The first track on Trebuchet, Counterpoise, is only just over three
minutes in length, and acts as a kind of front page for the album.
It is quite different to the other two pieces, consisting of warm,
relatively high pitched tones, not unlike the sound of metal[s]
vibrated gently and lapping slowly over each other while electro-
nic pulses brood underneath and a grainy layer of itchy, scratchy
scrapes and tapping sits on top. This short piece is full of bright,
glowing colour and no small degree of elegant beauty, and its
simplicity works well as a counterpoint to the dense, grittier
material that is to follow.
[Second track] Three is gorgeous. It opens with a roaring,
detailed rush of sound that might be a field recording of a busy
road, or an airport, or something… but is soon bathed in hisses,
lulling moans, piercing tones and a repeatedly chiming bell sound
which doesn’t stay still for one second and gradually melds into a
layered, continuous drone for a few moments with the chime still
ticking underneath for a while. After nine of the track’s 17 minutes
everything strips back to some kind of unidentifiable field record-
ing, vaguely industrial in its feel, but quiet and distant in nature.
[Then] a peculiar thud is followed by what I think is a deeply reso-
nant piano note and a rush of heavy swarms of oscillating tones
which form the basis for the last five minutes, always changing,
sometimes with other sounds added, dying into what could be
another field recording to end the piece.
[The final track] Four [was] recorded earlier than the others,
with Dropp Ensemble colleague Salvatore Dellaria added to the
ranks. At 21 minutes it is the longest track here. It opens with
what sounds like a heartbeat, or a musical approximation of
one murmuring away quietly. Very slowly, through continual
accumulation of material over the next ten minutes, the track
builds into a heaving mass of grainy detritus, few tones, little
colour, just overlaid recordings that suggest different shades of
grey peppered with dusty fragments and static. The beauty of
the music is wrapped up in this layering of multitudes of inter-
esting sounds that all merge together into [a] sensual detailed
mass so that the individual elements or instruments can’t quite
be made out. Then, as the noise subsides into a stream of thin,
whispery elements, a field recording emerges from beneath
the music. It is the sound of children at play. The field record-
ing quickly engulfs the other sounds, and then sits alone at the
end of the track for just a few seconds before cutting dead to
end the album. The interesting thing about this moment for me
is that, while field recordings have been used throughout much
of the album this is the only one that can easily be identified
as one — and a recognisable one at that. Its place here at the
end of the piece is somehow very powerful, a statement of some
kind after the rest of the music, though what kind of statement
I am not certain.
The power of the music, its almost symphonic grandeur, comes
from the layering of so many sounds, perhaps many of them in
real-time improvisation, others in post-production. The cumula-
tive effect is one that really focuses the listener [and] pulls you
into the music, like being dragged down head first.
Richard Pinnell at The Watchful Ear