John Wall/Alex Rodgers
Work 2006–2011
CD (E114)

For a detailed breakdown and clarification of the sound and text
pieces used in this work go to jwarwork.wordpress.com

—

Wall and Rodgers have worked together informally and irregularly
for the best part of two decades, but it has been since Wall took the
leap into improvisation, roughly five years ago, that the potential
for their collaborations to become something more solid has evolved.
So the pair have worked together, either just informally in Wall's
studio or out playing live gigs since 2006, and they have produced
a body of material that Wall has then sculpted into the composition
that appears on the CD. The sounds that we hear then are the out-
put of that work together.

Although in places the mark of improvisation is clear the majority
of what we hear has been carefully picked out and resampled by
Wall alone into the structure presented here. So while recordings
of improvisations have been used in the final work, its important
to note that this album is essentially a composition pieced together
over a period of months rather than years.

This album has a real menace to it, a hint of violence, and a
thoroughly unsettling overtone. This comes partly from Wall’s sounds,
which have taken on a sharp, aggressive feel, with brutally piercing
tones matching sudden swerves from one sonic extreme to another,
but Rodgers’ contributions also play a big part. Both Wall and
Rodgers are outsiders looking in on the conventional art and music
worlds, neither of them seek to hide a real sadness that has developed
into a bitterness over the state of today’s modern world. While Wall’s
anger can be heard in the music, Rodgers’ spoken word parts are
equally acerbic. He sounds constantly on edge, his voice slurs in
places, growls in others and has a gruff bite to it that is only ampli-
fied by the cheap dictaphones used to record many of his parts. His
words move between a bitterly spat-out stream of angry obscenity-
ridden disgust and a carefully worked out and scripted sense of
surrealism all wrapped up in a Beckettian verbal sensibility. There
is a hint of automatic writing to his words, though Rodgers is at
pains to make clear that there are no stream of consciousness
practices at work, everything is carefully planned here.

This CD is a fascinating collection of sounds and words that reflects
the personalities of the duo perfectly. Wall keeps most of Rodgers
spoken parts intact and untreated, and builds his sounds around them,
working alone and only approving the recordings stage by stage with
Rodgers every so often. Its maybe not one for the faint-hearted, and
it will doubtlessly annoy those that might be expecting Wall to have
just picked up from where Cphon ended.

Its as good a document of the kind of work Wall is currently involved
in as is possible, a great introduction to Alex Rodgers work and a
fine piece of music that constantly hints at collapse, nudges at the
borders of what computer composition is supposed to sound like.

The July 2011 issue of The Wire (329) features
an extensive interview with Wall and Rodgers by
Richard Pinnell

See also John Wall/Mark Durgan (E139)

Edition of 500 copies






in battledress

under cape.

upon-

deserted rookery nook.

not

cawing or whining.

not

arguing or roaring.

for

attention of any sort,

no skein or froth.

no hook or drill

no clue or

secretly,excellently

up thrusting, (no hole for ye either.)

no bolus

net or

scolds bridle

no lariat,noose,snare

not even any

‘come here’

on balance,

feets the notch

astride the perch

besmirch,

in rain

in branks

‘we have no licence’

you dont know unless you try eh?


John Wall has been one of the most aggressive of sonic plunderers, shatter-
ing recorded electroacoustic improvisations and putting them back as mutated
humpty-dumptys in intricate and lively collages. His series of CDs on his own
imprint Utterpsalm are essential documents of this meticulous studio style.
Since 2006, he has taken up improvisation — remarkable for someone with
his attention to detail — and has also pursued a working relationship with the
poet Alex Rodgers. The music on this CD represents an edited compilation of
their five years of working together. Wall’s music serves as both interstices
and background for Rodgers’ performances of his terse, dark poetry, whose
performances are occasionally processed but more often stand on their own.
Wall’s compositions sling sharp high frequencies and granulated digital noise
around Rodgers’ poetry, creating a perfect amplification of the dark mood of
Rodgers’ voice. As sonic structures collapse and reform into misanthropic
texts, it is a deeply affecting listen.

Chris Kennedy in Musicworks Magazine
—

A fascinating release. A bit has been written on what a departure this is
for Wall, but I’m not sure. [A]side from the obvious prominence of Rodgers’
voice, [what] I hear it as a not too wayward extension of the previous works.
Yes, it was constructed, labouriously one imagines though not so much as
had been the case on earlier releases; built from improvisations but so had
much of his music been before. It’s pared down in terms of elements — just
Wall and Rodgers — but much of his music had been as well, even if there
were half a dozen contributors at a given moment; it tended to sound
sparse and astringent.

Rodgers’ texts are not at all improvised, though Wall seems to have taken
liberties rearranging and editing them. From what I understand, the slight
warping and other electronic effects imparted to his voice are of his own
devising as well as having recorded into a cheap dictaphone, hence perhaps
the up-closeness of his sound. Wall balances his own contributions equitably,
Rodgers phasing in and out of a mix that’s not all too unlike Wall’s past work
despite (one assumes) not be derived from the instrumental work of others
and, as stated, having been improvised. It retains the silvery thinness heard
before, a unique and beautiful sound-world; I’ve little doubt I would have
recognised the music as Wall’s in a blindfold test. I often visualise a think
plate of copper or zinc, with various bumps, scratches and other ‘imperfec-
tions’ arrayed across its softly gleaming surface. Rodgers, his words slurred,
bitter and Beckettian, adds just the right amount of soot... or suet. It really
meshes perfectly, not foregrounded so much, more embedded.

While certainly episodic in construction (as can be seen here, the piece
cleaves together seamlessly as a whole, a bleak cascade of shards and
syllables, like little else you'll hear. An excellent recording.

Brian Olewnick at Just Outside
—

As poet Alex Rodgers puts it, in a voice halfway between declamation
and moan: “All the protocols of surface tension/The necessary resistance
of the other”. An alllusive and wonderfully nuanced merging of text and
digital sound, Work 2006–2011 negotiates a precarious power balance.
Rodgers’s poetry, delivered ina deadpan monotone, touches on obtuse
metaphors and odd symbols, playing on the menacing banalities of every-
day speech. Wall’s contributions — surprisingly harsh, often outright
vicious, with an emphasis on rupture and cut-away — surround it cleverly.
In contract to Cphon, his most recent solo release, he favours a kind of
digital mark-making, relying on flurries of pointillistic smears, serrated
crackles and volatile pitch fragments. When Rodgers’ voice disappears,
he weaves delicate, lattice-like pattern from tones flitting wildly across
the stereo spectrum.

Nick Cain in The Wire