CNV50
release date: 24.Jul.2008

JASON KAHN - timelines_ny

Vital Weekly 652


Hmmm... didn't we already review a work by Jason Kahn called 'Timelines'? Yes, we did, in Vital Weekly 464, when we wrote: "Also on the subject of graphical scores is Kahn himself, in his 'Timelines' piece, for six players with whom Kahn worked before. These are Thomas Korber (guitar, electronics), Norbert Möslang (cracked everyday electronics), Günter Müller (mini disc, ipod, electronics), Steinbrüchel (laptop), Christian Weber (contrabass); the sixth one being Jason Kahn himself on analogue synthesizer. Kahn says that '"Timelines" approaches the idea of a "social music", in that this composition can only work with these particular people in this particular context'. 'Timelines' is a lengthy piece, around seventy minutes, and that is a bit too much. This mainly has to do with the dynamics of the piece, or maybe rather the lack thereof. Things go by in a seemingly endless stream, in which each player gets his solo role (the cracked everyday electronics of Möslang burst out at one
point), but at the same time, in the background things continue to sizzle, crack and hum. Some of the passages take too much time. What I miss in this piece is the tension between the players, maybe some dramatic built up or something like that. Maybe the piece should have been forty minutes, with a little bit more dramatic tension among the players. Plus it would have been nice to maybe see in the booklet how such a graphical score looks like." That last thing is corrected here with a PDF version of the score, which looks indeed very much like a nice graphical score. This New York version lasts no less then two hours, so pretty much of what I wrote about the CD release applies here again. Its all a bit long

[ Frans de Waard ]

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