MICHEL VAN DER AA Above - Between - Attach - Just Before - Auburn - Oog

Above, Between, Attach, Just Before, Auburn, Oog is the long title assigned by Dutch Composer's Voice label to the maiden solo voyage on disc of contemporary Dutch composer Michel van der Aa. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, van der Aa is considered one of the young Turks of cutting-edge European concert music. Composers attempting to make a name in the late twentieth century had to deal with a great deal of mid-century dogma, the legacy of academic serialism, and of minimalism. Van der Aa comes to contemporary music with no such baggage in tow, yet instead of turning back to traditional, audience-friendly musical forms, van der Aa makes avant-garde music that is fresh, uncompromising, and boundary-expanding. He arrives at a time of cynicism and a lack of decisiveness about the future of experimental music; and perhaps his time is right.

Van der Aa works with audiophile-quality, multi-track recordings that are recorded by the ensembles participating in these chamber works; often it is difficult to tell where the live music ends and pre-recorded material begins as the two are combined so smoothly. A favorite device is the use of tearing or ripping sounds on the tapes, a stylistic attribute that is amusingly echoed in the disc's striking cover image. Abrupt punching in or punching out of sounds, a recording engineer's nightmare, is another favored technique. Of these works, the most strongly attractive one is the piano piece Just Before, played beautifully by pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama. It appears that Mukaiyama had some collaborative input into the piece itself, significant as not many virtuosi would care to have such an extreme level of intervention and manipulation of the recorded performance by the composer as is heard. The guitar piece Auburn, which initially helped van der Aa gain his reputation, is impressive in its jazzy, highly dissonant fast section. Oog, for cello, is a nervous piece that has an affecting moment where the cello's tone seems to shatter apart. Listeners who seek in contemporary music balm for their frayed nerves will find nothing in van der Aa's music to ease their troubles. Nonetheless, those who love a challenge, yet hate academicism for its own sake, will embrace van der Aa with enthusiasm and listen to this disc again and again. (Uncle Dave Lewis)