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Document Chicago #7

gasps & fissures is an improviser's response to the paradoxes and absurdities of recording improvised music, and an attempt to inhabit gray areas and straddle facile dichotomies: improvisation/composition, acoustic/electronic, abstract/concrete, natural/artificial, organic/digital. Sounds generated by the direct application of wind, water, and flesh to wood and metal are grotesquely magnified and manipulated in time and space to sculpt music of claustrophobic intimacy and impossible physicality.

Completed through the Artists Residency Program at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Musicians: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, english horn, suona, mijwiz) with Kurt Johnson (bass)

"...shocking intriguing, enthralling …and just damn interesting." — All About Jazz

" ...aesthetic pleasure in design and discovery." — The Wire

"Kyle Bruckmann has never been content to sit still and concentrate on just one genre - witness his bloodcurdling performances as lead singer of the post-punk power group Lozenge - and the stochastic accumulation of overdubs in "Exponential" sounds more like Xenakis than it does "standard" improv. Similarly the minute pitch fluctuations of "Gaps & Fictions" and the cavernous drone of "Elsewhere" belong more to the world of Alvin Lucier and Phill Niblock. Whichever bag you want to put it in though, gasps & fissures is a worthy addition to your record collection, however you choose to organise it" — Paris Transatlantic

"“An improviser's response to the paradoxes and absurdities of recording improvised music. Sounds generated by the direct application of wind, water and flesh to wood and metal are grotesquely magnified and manipulated in time and space." What else do you want to know? At gigs you can see how sounds are produced. On record there's the added interest of guessing, or you can just accept sounds on their own terms, from the utterly baffling to spittle vibrating in the woodwind tubes, breath passing over the reeds, quasicontrapuntal circularly-breathed licks with the keys close-miked so the slapping of pads is as audible as what emerges from the bell, or a track underpinned by a monumental 18-minute chord. I enjoyed it, but then I'm weird." — Jazz Review (UK)

More Information...

gasps & fissures — Signal to Noise

gasps & fissures — Paris Transatlantic

gasps & fissures — The Wire

gasps & fissures — Cadence

Dusted review

One Final Note review

The Document Chicago Series

Kyle Bruckmann main page at 482music.com