Album: MAX RICHTER – 24 Postcards in Full Colour (130701 CD1307 2008)

24 tracks in less than 34 minutes. An exercise in sublime miniaturisation or a sketchy mish-mash of half-formed ideas? 24 Postcards in Full Colour was initially conceived as a collection of pieces designed to be used as ringtones. Whilst they would make a welcome change to the tinny cacophony that you usually have to put up with on trains, most of the pieces on the album are more fully formed than the initial brief would suggest.

Max Richter may be a pianist, but this is far from a collection of Satie-esque piano miniatures. Indeed, the instrument features on probably fewer than half the tracks of an extremely eclectic collection. The Satie comparison does hold true for “Circles from the Rue Simon – Crubellier”, and there are other solo keyboard pieces such as “H in New England” and “The Tartu Piano”. It’s also the lead instrument on other tracks. “Found Song For P.” adds a cello for colour, and “Cradle Song For A.” adds a gently plucked acoustic guitar to create an enchanting little lullaby.

There are some desolately beautiful string-led pieces, from the deeply sad “This Picture of Us. P.” for violin and cello to the strange combination of humming engine and violin that makes up “A Sudden Manhattan of the Mind”. Preston Reed’s guitar sounds like it was recorded down the phone on “In Louisville at 7” and “A Song For H. / Far Away”, in both cases being swathed in radio static and randomly semi-tuned stations. Other tracks give nods to Michael Nyman (the harsh, serialist viola of “Berlin by Overnight”) and Terry Riley (the babbling, pulsing electronica of “Tokyo Riddle Song”) amongst others. Elsewhere there are pieces built around electronica, amplifier hum and a myriad of other processed sounds.

The first couple of listens did lead to an overall impression of dancing on hot coals – jumping from one idea to another with barely a breath taken – but gradually the tracks do become distinct. For most, their length isn’t really important – they begin, express their ideas and end in however long it takes without feeling especially truncated. Some do feel like hacked off remnants of longer pieces, though, and would be much better given more time to develop. Some, too, just seem to stop; like a joke without a punchline.

I had feared that 24 Postcards in Full Colour would be the aural equivalent of an artist’s sketchbook – half-realised ideas as opposed to fully formed miniatures. By and large it’s much more than that. Some of these pieces are among the most accomplished of Richter’s recorded career, despite their brevity. Like a well-chosen tapas selection, the result is a deeply satisfying meal rather than a collection of thrown together snack-bites.

Tracks
1 The Road Is A Grey Tape 1:01
2 H In New England 1:50
3 This Picture Of Us. P. 1:36
4 Lullaby From The Westcoast Sleepers 2:02
5 When The Northern Lights / Jasper And Louise 1:00
6 Circles From The Rue Simon – Crubellier 1:04
7 Cascade NW By W 1:12
8 A Sudden Manhattan Of The Mind 2:51
9 In Louisville At 7 1:03
10 Cathodes 1:01
11 I Was Just Thinking 0:59
12 A Song For H / Far Away 2:08
13 Return To Prague 1:02
14 Broken Symmetries For Y 1:00
15 Berlin By Overnight 1:27
16 Cradle Song For A (Interstate B3) 2:11
17 Kierling / Doubt 0:50
18 From 553 W Elm Street, Logan Illinois (Snow) 0:57
19 Tokyo Riddle Song 1:00
20 The Tartu Piano 2:05
21 Cold Fusion For G 0:35
22 32 Via San Nicolo 1:23
23 Found Song For P. 2:24
24 H Thinks A Journey 0:57

Website
http://www.maxrichter.com/

Album: A FatCat Records Sampler (FatCat FAT-SAMP08 2008)

So what the hell happened to FatCat? Time was it was a label you could rely on to come up with interesting stuff that knew no boundaries, crossing classical, electronica, folk and rock. Whether it be the noisy data-rock of Xinlisupreme, the epic landscapes of Set Fire To Flames, or the warped electro-folk of Múm, there was always something pretty unique and hard to pin down about the records they put out.

The sampler given away with the August issue of Plan B was the only reason I bought the magazine, so it was a real disappointment to discover that so much of it is crushingly ordinary. It kicks off with a Vashti Bunyan track from 1965 that proves that she was never cut out to be a swinging sixties pop singer, and despite the best efforts of Jagger and Richards, she sounds really awkward trying to do straight pop. The next half dozen or so tracks range from the forgettable to the excruciating (Tom Brosseau’s contribution) but with a large dollop of twee shared between them. Charlottefield’s “Snakes” at least has some life to it, but they strike me as a poor man’s Aereogramme.

Things do pick up along the final stretch. We Were Promised Jetpacks kneel at the feet of Franz Ferdinand, but they do have a bit of spark about them (and a great name). The Twilight Sad’s contribution growls along nicely, although they forgot to pack a tune. Max Richter’s “Return To Prague” is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it miniature that’s really too short to work outside the context of his forthcoming album of very brief pieces. Our Brother The Native’s “Augural Wrath” is an excellent piece of mellow free-folk. The blurb in the magazine claimed that they’d left the best till last with Hauschka’s track. And so it proves. “Blue Bicycle” is far richer and more expansive than anything I’ve heard by him before, and easily the best thing on a disappointing collection.

As for the magazine, there’s Kevin Martin, Philip Jeck and Leila Arab and a whole host of other stuff. For some reason, I’ve never got on with the publication, even though they write about a lot of interesting stuff that often gets ignored elsewhere and don’t seem to have any agenda other than “if we like it, it’s in”. I don’t know if it’s the dead hand of Everett True clouding my judgement!

Tracks
1. Vashti Bunyan – I Want To Be Alone
2. David Karsten Daniels – Martha Ann
3. Gregory & The Hawk – Ghost
4. Nina Nastasia – Your Red Nose
5. Vetiver – To Baby
6. Tom Brosseau – True to You
7. Silje Nes – Dizzy Street
8. Ten Kens – Y’All Come Back Now
9. Charlottefield – Snakes
10.The Rank Deluxe – Tightrope
11.We Were Promised Jetpacks – Tiny Little Voices
12.Frightened Rabbit – I Feel Better
13.The Twilight Sad – Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did
14.Max Richter – Return To Prague
15.Our Brother The Native – Augural Wrath
16.Hauschka – Blue Bicycle

Gig: Max Richter / RememberRemember – The Arches, Glasgow, 22/11/2007

The only time I’d seen Max Richter previously was when he supported the Balanescu Quartet in Edinburgh last year. On that occasion, the set was mainly solo piano with electronics. Tonight, however, Richter was accompanied by a string quintet comprised of two violins, two cellos and a viola. The sound was consequently fuller, and bore much more resemblance to the albums. Most of the pieces played tonight were drawn from The Blue Notebooks and Songs From Before, with the disembodied voices of Robert Wyatt and Tilda Swinton reading from texts by Haruki Murakami and Franz Kafka respectively.

Richter’s oeuvre is fairly minimalist piano-led orchestral music with an electronic undercurrent and tinged with melancholy. In many ways it is typical of the plethora of rock/classical crossover artists in that the playing is spare, with no virtuosic grandstanding. Even so, it was an impressive and moving set. It was odd, though, that Richter and his piano were at the back of the stage behind the five string players. It made for a slightly surreal spectacle during the solo keyboard pieces when you could hardly see him behind five seated, motionless musicians looking a little self-conscious. That said, musically there was little to fault it.

Support was provided by RememberRemember, a guitar and sampler act. I’ve seen plenty do what he does before – running simple guitar lines through the sampler and building them into a dense and complex piece of music. Few, though, have done it with the same wit and imagination. He used objects such as scissors, a lighter and a squeaky toy shark as percussion, and played recorder and xylophone too. At times it was redolent of Durutti Column or Rothko. The tour de force was the final track of the three he played, which gradually built into a powerful, cinematic epic culminating in a percussive climax of sampled handclaps. It was exceptionally well done. He needs to improve his stagecraft, though. Much of the time was spent crawling amongst the cables trying to work out what needed to be plugged in and where, whilst grinning embarrassedly at the audience. A fine set though.

Song of the day: MAX RICHTER – Song (2006)

German born, UK raised pianist Max Richter creates a wistful fusion of classical chamber music and electronics that he’s described as “post-classical”. His third album, Songs From Before, was released last year by Fat Cat on their 130701 imprint. It is a fairly short cycle of a dozen pieces for piano, laptop and string sextet, with some accompanying extracts of writing by author Haruki Murakami read by Robert Wyatt. The mood is reflective, but not sombre – introspective, but not self-absorbed.

“Song” opens the record. It’s an instrumental piece built upon a subtle, subterranean rumbling beat that sounds like distant thunder. It’s quiet, but vaguely sinister. There is a subdued, looped organ motif overlaying this, but the main melodic thrust is provided by a yearning solo violin. The track’s coda sees a viola taking over, changing key, and subtly improvising on the initial melody lines. Then the music dissolves into the sound of rainfall, and the next track, “Flowers For Yulia”. The playing is spare, but the effect is deeply satisfying. It feels like it ought to be twice its four minute duration as it goes by too quickly.

Richter’s other two albums are Memoryhouse (Late Junction 2002) and The Blue Notebooks (130701 2004), the latter featuring Tilda Swinton reading extracts from Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks. All three are highly recommended late night listening, especially if you like your chill-out music to have an intellectual edge.