Sound Colour Vibration (Music | Art | Film | Technology | Science | Culture)

It is with no easy task that one finds themselves in the ranks of John Zorn’s illustrious circle of avant-garde improvisers and virtuoso musicians. Jeremiah Cymerman is one of the few to rise into these ranks in recent years and his unorthodox approach to the clarinet and improvisatory composition has consumed a new defining pathway of avant-garde and challenging music. Challenging is somewhat of an understatement when trying to piece together the origins of sounds that appear in his records. The exploratory sensibilities to his playing remove everything around me when his music makes contact and I become encased into a different reasoning and existence of life. Most music of the avant-garde shoots into the cosmos, Cymerman’s tones begin there.

Jeremiah Cymerman contacted us this month as he has a brand new record coming out, Purification/Dissolution. As the latest solo release since his 2008 Tzadik release In Memory of the Labyrinth System, Purification/Dissolution is more aggressive, organic and primal than anything he has released before. Imaginative on every level, feedback and other unorthodox methods of sound painting become a tool for Cymerman’s most accomplished masterpiece in Purification/Dissolution.

With intense moments of primordial and mutated sonic flights, there is an overwhelming state of unknowns that exist on Purification/Dissolution. Released on his newly formed label 5049 Records, the following from Cymerman’s label explains what this new imprint stands for, “5049 Records is composer Jeremiah Cymerman’s new boutique record label.  Created to release special, small-run projects on limited edition CDs, the goal with 5049 is to present challenging & unique music in distinctive packaging made available directly to the discerning listener.” Where one could easily tag on a word noise to such auspicious encounters of the other side of music, Jeremiah Cymerman makes it every tracks purpose to define a sonic territory that removes itself from such an easy and vague tag. The pulse of something unreal travels all across Purification/Dissolution, serving as soundtrack music for something of the deepest and darkest kind.

Spread over five tracks, this latest solo album from one of New York’s most out there composers is as experimental as it gets, yet there is cohesion in the name of mediums that don’t normally find room on an album with the type of vast exploration that ensues. This is an album that truly speaks a very different language from the foundation of its core. not just a processing of oddly shaped noises that fit easily together.

Starting with the title track, “Purification / Dissolution”, the 13 minutes that makes up this piece are devastating in character and leave a reconstructed window of manipulation through electronics and acoustics that plows through everything in its path. There is a vicious and maniacal feel to the beginning section of this opener that doesn’t allow any room for breathing. Oscillation is set to freak out mode as synth sounds like it is being processed through a sonic grinder. A raging vestige of synths serves as the pulsing mechanism and maneuvering force of a scream that can only be accessed inside of this type of medium. A corner is turned about half way into the opener as the breathing room and anxiety of the beginning takes rest for a much more spiritually expansive voyage. A small presence of percussion outlines the ending moments of ”Purification / Dissolution” as a menacing, darkened and slow burning state of tones spouts out like a natural spring. The clarinet is at its most recognizable state at this point and hovers over the darkened aura of the synth like vultures waiting for the kill. The music is truly dark at this point and enters my senses with some of the most unrestrained and unrestricted levels of emotion.

“Charnel Ground” continues the path of Purification / Dissolution, and comes in with as much aggressive force as the beginning piece. The clarinet is cloaked in tons of electronics while drone chords rise in and out of fixated layers. Metallic machine like sounds come in over even more processed modes as the music finds a strange and desolate degree of melodic phrasing to it. Imagine being thrown in a pit with no way out and “Charnel Ground” is the dooming voice of your state. The grey and black clouds dissipate with the next track, song “Secret Refuge (for Adam Yauch)”. A state of unbounded beauty, grace and charm becomes the focal point and state of being now and much of the remainder of the album flows with this ease. Cymerman’s clarinet phrasing is really open, really wide and speaks out of what I’d like to think is ancient scripture. Soft yet stretched out as far as the mind can canvas mental space in imaginative form, there is a natural earth bound and majestic state that overtakes ”Secret Refuge (for Adam Yauch)” with a small cosmic ambiance that defines why it is still not of this world. Taking a flight into the rest of the album is as close to out of body I have ever felt with an album, especially on a good pair of headphones. Every texture comes with something bigger than just a sound and maps out a reasoning of compositional positioning that raises questions of origin every second.

Jeremiah Cymerman leaves nothing behind on Purification/Dissolution, a reality that is easy to feel as it is to calculate in terms of avant-garde music. Exploratory music in its most raw, calculated and passionate states has never been composed with as much attention to space and melody as it has on Purification/Dissolution. Bending the perception of tones, Purification/Dissolution will please any fan of avant-garde music.

-Erik Otis

Order this album here: http://www.jeremiahcymerman.com/purchase

Listen to Charnel Ground among many other tracks from Jeremiah Cymerman here: http://www.jeremiahcymerman.com/listen