A couple things: How Things Are Made are wicked
deconstructionists. The trio, Matt Aelmore, David Bernabo, and Brian Riordan,
here challenge mud with Challenging Mud,
a salvo aimed at convention, at the building blocks of human constitution, at
the very substance that, when dry, you can build stuff on; but when it’s wet,
watch out – it’s slippery and mucky and unstable a molecule being poked and
prodded with scientific equipment. You can’t secure anything on it.
Or can you?
Also: “Devon Osamu Tipp Is Challenging Mud” sees the
titular shakuhachi player join the HTAM crew for a live rendition of whatever the hell they want to do at a
January 2019 performance in Pittsburgh. Talk about shifting: Tipp’s playing,
which is also joined by Aelmore’s viola and trumpet, slides back and forth
across an uneven surface, and these conventional instruments can’t find any
purchase in a sea of synthesizer and “live processing” (the unstable waves undulate
across the surface; the shakuhachi and trumpet become a gale). The thick brown
currents overwhelm any vessel that tries to cross them, proving once and for
all how dangerous it is to rely on them for anything. You can’t plan for the
passage, it’s too unpredictable.
Also unpredictable? “Joshua Tenenbaum Delivers
10,000 Horses,” but this guest provides a twist – he’s only playing “cassette
recorder, no input mixer.” What? Just kidding. You can do anything these days
with any kind of sound source, just as me as I shriek into the toilet while
recording it on the Garageband app on my iPhone. HTAM and Tenenbaum trade
blurts of disturbing cacophony, rhythmic in some unspeakable nature, busy and
odd and utterly fabulous. Like something out of last year’s Lärmschutz split
series, “10,000 Horses” brings the best out of the collaborators as each one
tries out outweird the other, with the audience emerging as the winners in this
struggle for experimental supremacy.
Oh yeah, “10,000 Horses” was recorded live at The
Space Upstairs in Pittsburgh in September 2018.
The third thing: This is available from Flag Day
Recordings, one of Pennsylvania’s fine purveyors of exotic cassettes.
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