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Box, "Studio 1"
According to the label, this band was formed by writer/film-maker Philip Mullarkey to create music for and perform live with his art/film project Box. The artists, who have collaborated with the likes of Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble, Fantomas, Melt Banana and Kronos Quartet, among others, met without any planning or preparation and simply improvised together over the span of two days. They must have been a natural fit with one another, because the tracks presented here come together as a well composed suite of out there space rock/free jazz tracks rather than the live-to-tape improvisation that they truly are.
I was intentional in saying "tape" because that is a vital component to the sound and ambience of this album: besides the fact all of the tracks were improvised live there were no overdubs or ProTools editing, and it was recorded to good old analog tape. That fact alone gives the disc a somewhat hazy warmth to it, like the fog of an early summer morning. It never interferes with the fidelity of the recording though, which remains distinct and sharp. The album is front loaded with the massive length "Untitled 9," which is propelled by a hard hitting drum line that only relents at the mid-point break of the track, along with bizarre processed guitar abuse, some oscillating electronic tones, and a very dubby bass line from Fantômas member/John Zorn collaborator Trevor Dunn.
While somewhat structured at first, the mix feels like begins to fall apart: the electronics from Ståle Storløkken start getting wobbly and Raoul Björkenheim's guitar starts to slip into stuttering jazz horn progression sounds before everything comes to a dead stop. The silence is allowed to hang for a bit before the track ramps back up into a similar vibe, but led by Morgan Ågren's brushed drumming and Bjorkenheim switching to viola.
The remaining tracks retain the same sort of mood as the opening, but end up significantly shorter, mostly hovering in the five to eight minute range. Some of these lean more towards the jazzier end of the spectrum, such as the steady beat and more restrained feel of "Untitled 11" and bass lead, skittering rhythms of "Untitled 3." However, the heavily effected guitar and electronic percussion of "Untitled 7" put the recording into a much more space/psych rock dimension as opposed to the jazzier one.
The biggest departure comes with "Untitled 13," which throws some scraping low end guitar riffs on top of pulsing electronics and marching band type drums that paint the whole track more as a unique take on stripped down minimalist metal more than anything in the sphere of jazz. In some regards there is a feel that the album as a whole is antecedent of some of Bill Laswell's stranger experiments during the mid 1990s, which resulted in a slew of varying projects. There are no specific parallels in sound, but in intent and experimentation. Considering the nature of these recordings, I wonder how things will turn out with subsequent releases: now that the players have had enough time to become more familiar, I can only guess how that will play out on the sound in the future.
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