Vic Rawlings/ Liz Tonne - "Truck Krone" (Semata Productions CS)

This split is apparently the first solo material to be released from these two (both long time members of the Boston Sound Collective). Both sides come from the same austere family, but are also very distinct from each other.

Rawlings' side listens like a to-do list of 'what is that coming out of my speaker?'. Entitled 'The Middle Of Three Days', the items delivered here are sparse, distinct, decible-defying detritus that seem to have been swept out of their pre-magnetic contexts and into the room. And there Vic's sounds appear, and appear, and appear. The stuff doesn't go anywhere, but it somehow doesn't accumulate either. Moment to moment, pieces occur in their fullness (or lack thereof) demanding the attention of the listener.

The room itself is ever present in the sonic vocabulary of this side. We hear coughing, the rustling of musical preparations, traffic (sirens) passing by outside. The result (paradoxically) is a phrasebook of sounds that seems as if they have their own agency, independent of the human being who is creating them.

Apparent in his choice to work with the circuitry of open-backed pedals, Vic seems to want the music to happen to itself, or perhaps even for it to argue with his intentions. One gets the sense that he is simultaneously 'hacking' and 'breeding' his electronics - ripping them apart in order to let them live.

Tonne's side is two pieces - 'B' and 'Arsonist' which run together into one stop and stark, extended vocal technique placement. Like Rawlings' side, Liz leaves room for the room to breathe. We hear a lot of 'other' sounds - from beginnings of beginnings to vocal pipes drying off. The result is a recording with a wonderful depth of field underlying cut cord, stutter-spurt singing that comes at you very directly. I'm sorry, did I say 'singing'?

Tonne's instrument is completely naked here. It moves, at times, to extremes and screams that push the fidelity of the tape, transforming the texture of her tones into hard brass or electronic territories. But for the most part we get to see and feel (up close) the small tensions that she is constructing. Her sounds are at once exceptionally precise and frustratingly incidental. Each short phrase lasts forever.

The material exported by the BSC (now 10 years old!) and the many projects in that projects orbit, always beckon to the ears that receive them. They put you on the spot, and elude the television zones that people have come to expect out of their excessively-stimulated sensorium. By no means a new kid on the block, this absolute way of making music is an oldie, but a goodie (at least the way that the these Boston based free-improv peeps serve it).