"The tall peaceful trees would be like
the pipes of a great organ…", Claude
Debussy
The singular, often
beautiful, sometimes wilfully obscure
or even absurd Touch philosophy is applied,
on this pair of discs, to the world
of the organ, "The Emperor of Instruments";
it being Touch, we are taken back as
far as 300BC and Ancient Greece and
also flung forward into the future.
Relatively conventional organ music
features alongside environmental recordings
of various descriptions and a fair input
from the contemporary (non-jazz) avant-garde.
The result is a stimulating,
if unusual listen for aficionados of
the instrument and for anyone with a
mind open to interesting music of any
provenance. Although the beautifully
photographed sleeve/booklet art (of,
for example, precipitous chalk cliffs,
light infiltration in a coniferous forest
clearing, and gently grazing sheep)
and the mention of Anglican church organs
might suggest a rather reassuring, traditional
content may lie within, nothing could
be further from the truth. Label founder
and reluctant genius, Mike Harding (not
the Lancashire folk comedian!) pens
a concise but fascinating and focused
introductory note; Arvo Pärt and
Richard Rodney Bennett somehow find
their way into it. "The organ represents
the marriage between acoustic complexity
and ritualised space" probably tells
you (virtually) everything, up-front,
about what you are likely to encounter
once you start to listen to the discs.
The more "traditional"
pieces include two by BJ Nilsen - the
very brief and suitably named Zephyr
and Breathe which takes almost
twelve minutes to go beyond its introductory
drone. Once this happens we do encounter
some different and sometimes startling
textures but, at 26 minutes plus, it
is difficult not to think the work is
more extended than its material would
normally allow. Marcus Davidson's Psalm
V follows like a relative breath
of fresh air and organist Charles Matthews
again copes admirably with the demands
of what must have been quite unfamiliar
material. The most interesting music
on the CD, although probably not entirely
for its own intrinsic value, is provided
by Jacob Kirkegaard. He "grew up in
the house" where enigmatic Danish composer
Rued Langgaard once lived and dedicates
his Epiludio Patetico to him.
The piece is actually based on samples
of Langgaard's organ music, and is good
in itself but I would exhort anyone
reading this who has never heard his
Music of the Spheres (Chandos
CHAN 9517) to do so as a matter of urgency
- it is strong enough not to be diminished
by being placed alongside similar works
of Holst, Messiaen and Varèse.
Turning to the more
avant-garde aspects of this release,
Ellgren's Royal Organ is a rather
agitated (and repetitive) "tribute"
to Sweden's King Carolus XII. Carolus
was a heroic/tyrannical figure who clearly
still engenders a rather ambivalent
attitude in Swedes almost 300 years
after his assassination, the event that
brought to an abrupt halt his country's
military adventurism into adjacent countries.
Z'EV follows with something much more
appealing to these ears - Bach's organ
music deftly manipulated with sampling
technology to fit it into an eastern,
healing rubric - hence the "organ music
for organs" subtitle, related specifically
to the liver and kidneys!
Philip Jeck's Stops
is a pleasant enough drone but thankfully
quickly does what its title suggest
it should, whereas Sigmarsson's Details
would not have been out of place on
a "Dark Ambient" compilation like Isolationism,
a decade ago! Beatific noise doyen Christian
Fennesz teams up with Sparklehorse's
Scott Minor to create dwan, a
short piece which soothes the nerves
as effectively as any Pharaoh Sanders
or Marion Brown solo. However, the low
frequencies around which Péturson's
Diabolus operates do exactly
the opposite and are appropriately titled.
Geir Jenssen, from arctic Norway, is
an acknowledged genius of the ambient
scene, possibly as great an influence
as Brian Eno in the latter's late seventies/early
eighties heyday. Cirque (also
on Touch) was a magnificent disc, and
although the ambition here is more restrained,
the simple signal of Visible Invisible
is clearly a product of a searching,
forward thinking musical mind. Toshiya
Tsunoda's hypnotic, ten minute Layered
reminds me of an excellent previous
Touch disc of Japanese environmental
sound recordings/transmutations (Chiky(u)u).
It gives way to something equally entrancing,
Tom Recchion's spectral Shut-eye
Train. Recchion reappears later
with guitarist Oren Ambarchi on the
similarly crepuscular Remake.
Disorganised was committed to
tape "in 1976 at the Unitarian Church
in Niagara Falls" and was provided by
the Analogue Society Archive. Although
the quality of recording (due to the
age?) and indeed the level of inspiration
are pretty suspect, there is no denying
the atmosphere created. Scott Taylor's
Droner is based around the invention
of the first organ in ancient Greece,
but for all its scientific and historical
relevance does not stick in the mind
particularly. Chris Watson, formerly
of Cabaret Voltaire and BBC wildlife
sound recordist par excellence,
closes the set with a piece, based on
tapes of weather systems and wind, which
finds pure poetry in nature and hopefully
will encourage listeners to investigate
his marvellous previous discs like Stepping
into the Dark and Outside the
Circle of Fire.
Neil Horner
All music performed by composers except * by
Charles Matthews on the organs of the Collegiate
Church of St. Mary's, Warwick, England, March
2003. 
