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Platform, "Anthropocene"
The three Norwegian (and one French) artists who make up Platform may play mostly jazz-oriented instruments but the sounds they create are anything but. Clarinet, cello, piano and drums meld together into a wonderfully jerky, unpredictable free improvised noise. As mostly a live act, this album may not fully do the sound of them collaborating justice, but it makes for an exceptionally good attempt.
The sound throughout the ten songs that make up this album varies greatly, from vast space punctuated with strange instrument abuse to dense walls of bizarre instrumentation and improvisation.A piece such as "Brachycera" blends what sounds like percussive cello strings via Katrine Schi√∏tt and what resembles reversed feedback from unknown source.As a whole there is a loose and messy feeling to the piece, but in a fascinating and gripping manner.
"Coleoptera" mimics this feel, with random outbursts from Jonas Cambien's piano and muted sputters courtesy of Xavier Charles' clarinet.There is percussion via Jan Martin Gismervik, but it sounds like anything but drums.Instead it is a random outbursts of rattling and junky, metallic crashes.Sputtering percussive sounds and erratic piano heavily color "Orthoptera", resulting in a spacious work from all four musicians embracing quieter moments, but keeping the levels of entropy high.
Even with all of this intentional dissonance and free form chaos, there are moments where Platform almost sound as if they are playing something more formally composed.Bowed strings and harsh metallic percussion are at the forefront of "Gastropoda", but even with all of this weirdness the four sound as if they are all playing toward the same conclusion, giving an oddly musical sheen.Jazzy piano riffs offset rhythmic noises via percussion and cello, but "Araneae" has the quartet funneling that chaos into something with a loose sense of order and structure.
Essentially Anthropocene is an album of four musicians playing their instruments most often in ways they were never intended to be used.For that reason alone it is not the most accessible album, and that might not even fully capture the nature of the record.However, as a piece of free improvisation in the classic sense, Platform have recorded an album that features just the right amount of head scratching/"how the hell did they make that noise?" weirdness that the best practitioners of the genre manage to create.
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