Not listened to any Andrew Poppy until now and I’ve got to say I feel like I’ve been missing out, as this compelling four-disc excursion aptly demonstrates.
A superb series of endeavours embracing classical and avant flavours, Ark Hive Of A Live is full of improvised sparks and juddering disposition, the enclosed write-up full of fascinating insight.
The fourteen-minute “Goodbye Piano Concerto” confidently wades in there, oozing with jarring objectivity. An edgy, compositionally-sharp noir full of splashy percussives and tapering piano lines that sprawl across the canvas with shadowy intent and eddying details. A seriously immersive opener folding into the more classical tropes of “Attempt At An Ecstatic Moment” and “Chewing The Corner”, expanding his repertoire in a sustained sinew of falling nocturnes. The first finds an alto sax entangled in slippery orchestration. A doomed romance harking to some silent era accompaniment that slips away on the subtle pause of a double bass. “Chewing The Corner” follows, flowing in with more chaotic colours, dissonantly daggered in peaking tensions, the second half a riot of competing textures and arguing shapes evocatively leaking to lightly glazed drone.“Almost The Same Shame” commences like a solo piano piece, a scattering of dexterous diamonds and rolling chords. The thundering resonance of that piano is so good, circling in diminishing semi-tones and uplifting umbers. The conversation is tangent-torn, constantly mutating as the orchestra shimmers out a soft parade of droning shapes and sustained strings. The density increasing, folding in on itself, mirror-writing its reflection. That slowing key jerk drawing into a sunset bespectacled in some delirious low-fed percussive rumbling, something I could listen to again and again.
“Weighing The Measure” is an another winner, a tonal experiment that rounds off Disc 1, setting a clarinet and accordion sustain against a drum machine flexing metronomics, as the pinned sparseness of piano dipples through. A four-sided equation finding an uneasy equilibrium of jigsawing wings and looping apertures, suddenly flowering in an array of strange unisons, as the snare-like knitting needles mingle with the less mechanical. Sounds like somebody playing spoons or jam jars at one point to a spattering of cherry blossomed notation. A captivating twenty-three-plus minutes full of kiltering orbits and calligraphic contrast. Volume 2 features excerpts taken from larger works that feature voices, including Poppy himself. Commissioned and produced by institutions including the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre, these have an ECM/ Steve Reichian quality to them that is quite bewitching, varying from simple intones to full-on operatic. I really like the opener here, a glitterati of repetitive transformations / mutating texturals in which voices subtly blend in and out of throughout its twenty minutes. Song-form abstracts, spectrum-chasing and trombone-stretched as knotted arpeggios blur and everything suddenly gets atonal nailed into a reductive memory followed by plenty of appreciative cheering.Poppy’s song style is favoursome, more recited than actually sung, while the ace Olivier Messaien-like “Touch Of Your Hand” demonstrates a more choral approach. My only gripe is that I found the “The Miner Sings ‘Thank You My Sponsors’” a little bit too operatic for my liking, but that’s quickly forgotten as I take in the next instalment.
Volume 3 returns you to the instrumental verve, including more delicious piano action. Optimistically rivered, these offerings are bright, beam with a hectic rush of activity, conversationally dart in the ear bounce of “More Matter Less”. Whereas “Playing The Pulse” is more symphonic and dense, knotting you up in entertaining mirages and sweeping strings. A recursive memory taken up by “Darwin’s Sin Draw”’s silky swell and skipping delights. The final volume starts with three solo piano pieces from the Avalanche Thoughts suite performed by Tania Chen. These constitute two mellow fourteen-minute tracks sandwiching a short, more agitated piece. The first is a gentle cranium swish, an ambient soak of dancing tonality and sizzling shapes and a tidal echo that tumbles into the glinting whirlpool of circling dissonance that is the next track. A four-minute switch of atmospherics that quickly heralds the third and final piece of this suite, entitled “No. 6”, in a slow dapple of melting tones, meditatively breathing out into the silence. A curious anaesthesia of overlapping chimes that ghostly stretch into the space between, yield in the shadow of the next key fall.An atmospheric epitaph, the intriguing kinetics of the final track, “Eleven Word Title”, fly straight away to draw into an impressive canvas of broken geometrics, melodic melds and duelling textures. A psychedelically rich and satisfying soup of ideas that succinctly ends this fascinating collection on an undeniable high.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
