The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has worked much of his life to determine a topology of the unconscious. Using such figures the Moebius strip or boroméeen node, he proposes a study of the place where man is defined and more particularly the place where he speaks. Where it speaks. The Subject of psychoanalysis or Freudian unconscious, manifested in the language and subsequently can not be defined completely so. There is always a part of him that escapes, an irreducible. The Other, for Lacan, is a prerequisite for the existence of a pure signifier subject, no Other, no subject. The Other is the place of deployment of speech.
My first explorations in improvised music, especially in the free jazz, led me to consider this notion of place in improvisation. First, I came to think that the idiom of jazz, improvisation, varied significantly depending on the place where it was played and by whom it was played. Apart from the various schools that have formed, there seemed still irreducible in the individual who was playing, which seemed strongly influenced by its origin, place of birth, language he spoke. Naturally, an interpreter is an emulator, but when addressing the idiom of jazz through free improvisation, something is bound to occur. Something that the individual can not escape that goes beyond technique and the Subject.
Thus, in addition to our language or our place of birth, physical location also plays an important role in the improvisation. Because the places are talking about. Through the musicians of course but also through the Other within us and in which we swim constantly. Many have lived recognize strange feelings when they were in very specific places. Impressions hardly verbalised. But for some, music can witness what is happening.
On the underrated album " Hell's Kitchen / Live from Soundscapes", there are two improvisations from Don Cherry to the interior of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, recorded in 1978. In these parts pure creativity, Cherry plays with stalactites and flute. The first, stalactites only, is phenomenal, a work for percussion to the natural resonances of a distant world. More artists and composers have used natural places for providing facilities or provide sound performance using acoustic particular places. But here it seems to be faced with a musician who works on instinct and finally leaving the place to speak through him.
Even the amazing thing about the disc of Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink "Schwarzwaldfahrt", recorded in 1977 when the two men met in the Black Forest (in the South-West Germany) in order to improvise their lives. Sinking at the heart of the forest to let the language speak through them: their instruments, the elements, their cries, animals ...
Closer to home, the Jewelled Antler Collective has recaptured this approach slightly aesthetic field recordings with the vagaries of nature at their disposal . One of my favorite record of the genus remains "Leaves " Australians Eugene Carchesio and Leighton Craig, released on Naturestrip few years ago. Really a disc that deserves a fragile beauty to be discovered.
But besides nature, there are places that are steeped in history and it is these that interest us now. German Oak is a German group that seems to have recorded very little with their first album in 1972. There have been few but reissued on CD label Flashback just done in vinyl for the first time, I believe. Many consider this record as the quintessential Krautrock and they are not wrong. Incredible drive, stored in a bunker Nazi World War II by four young musicians from the German post-war generations. The BBC documentary on the Krautrock enlighten us a little about the pervasive sense that instilled in young of the first postwar generation. Instead of any forcing, German Oak were appropriate history and place with titles like "Raid Over Dusseldorf", "Swastika Rising" and "The Third Reich". I do not know their ideological allegiance, I do not think being pro-Nazi, perhaps only of youth who do not wish to suffer the shame and humiliation of defeat by erasing part of their history. Moreover, the back of the disc it says:
"If We Were not born, We Could not Have Done this. So We dedicate this record to Our parents Which Had a bad time in World War 2.
As We Played Down There In The bunker Suddenly a strange atmosphere Began to work. The Ghosts of the past whispered.
There has-been fear, desperation, hope to aussi! Maybe You Will Feel
Such impressions by listening too carefully. "
Some parts are groovy (like above) but other times on this disc are much closer Kosmische rock improvisations with synths, electric guitar and a bit more deconstructed structures.
There is another disc, which it almost made my top 10 last year, recorded in the same circumstances or almost. This is the album "Song Well " of New Zealand Anthony Milton, better known as The Nether Dawn, released on the label Porter Records. This wonderful album was recorded in a bunker in New Zealand which had the function of defending the island against a possible invasion Tsarist early 20th century. Truly a beautiful album of guitar, inspired songs and drones ... a moment of weakness.
