Featuring Scott Amendola, a co-conspirator from the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core, and Dohee Lee, a vocalist and dancer from the inkBoat collective with whom ROVA has collaborated, Kihnoua’s extremely free improvisation is bolstered on Unauthorized Caprices.
Kihnoua Unauthorized Caprices
Label: NotTwo Records, Poland (2010) Catalogue No: MW-831-2 Format: CD
Tracks:
1. Slat [14:02] 2. Nothing Stopped But A Future [19:45] 3. DeeHyak [07:11] 4. Weightless [12:17] 5. Less Than A Wind [07:30]
All music by Larry Ochs.
Line-up:
Larry Ochs - sopranino and tenor saxophones Dohee Lee - voice Scott Amendola - drums + electronics Liz Allbee - trumpet + electronics (tracks 1, 2, 5) Fred Frith - guitar (track 2) Joan Jeanrenaud - cello (tracks 2 + 5)
Recorded:
in California 2009.
Review:
Nihilism is a word better applied to Kihnoua, another Ochs project that shares his redilection for unusual instrumental groupings. Featuring Scott Amendola, a co-conspirator from the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core, and Dohee Lee, a vocalist and dancer from the inkBoat collective with whom ROVA has collaborated, Kihnoua’s extremely free improvisation is bolstered on Unauthorized Caprices, their first release, by Liz Allbee (trumpet/electronics), musical ally Fred Frith (guitar) and former Kronos cellist Joan Jeanrenaud. The abrasive tenor sax of Ochs and Amendola’s scattered kitwork on track one, “Slat”, indicate a sound world more reminiscent of a Peter Brötzmann or Frank Wright blowing session than the cerebral compositions of Planetary. Within half a minute, however, the two men are joined by Lee’s throaty, unintelligible singing style and a bevy of electronic waveforms. Allbee plays with brash, militaristic fanfare to match Lee’s excessive palatilizations. Elsewhere, as on “Less Than a Wind”, the electronic duties shared by both Allbee and Amendola take on the zap’-em tonalities of science fiction as Jeanrenaud’s cello traverses their strange frequencies with classical solemnity. Here Ochs forgoes virtuosity for atmosphere and texture, his simple phrases undulating around Lee’s elegiac voicings; the subtle synthetic ornaments keep her proceedings from becoming too maudlin. Frith appears only once, on “Nothing Stopped But a Future”, a sprawling epic of a composition that allows him to punctuate the music with shards of noise or spaghetti-western-like tension at his discretion. The one real cause for complaint is Lee, who does not sing often enough with the range of which she is capable. Take “DeeHyak”, for instance, a piece she c-penned with Ochs. It’s a marvelously wrought duet, she whispering furiously, working herself into high- pitched tweets, him crafting twisting lines on the sopranino or drawing them out into quavering multiphonics, warbling, trilling against her unknown tongues, the two sounding like steam from a kettle, wind passing through the lungs with deliberate obstruction - and all ending with a softly exhaled “dee- hyak!” - this concentrated effort is perhaps Kihnoua’s best moment on record as yet and hopefully a precursor of more to come. (Seth Watter, AllAboutJAzz - New York)
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