Of course I was aware of the performer when sliding this CD into the player, but I wasn’t aware of what kind of sound world would embrace me. I was surprised to find a sonic milieu that I could immediately associate to one – and one only - earlier singular experience - that of Norwegian sound artists and guitarist Askild Haugland, whom I’ve accounted for elsewhere at Sonoloco. He is an obscure and single-minded artist who uses extremely meager means to produce deeply touching and musically profound works, which he issues on vinyls!

Alex Carpenter of Music of Transparent Means in Adelaide, Australia, produces similar art, but on CD, and he also has a broader spectrum of possibilities through the loose-knit Music of Transparent Means Ensemble, of which he is the Director, and with which he has issued another CD; Selected Live Recordings.

When I read about The Music of Transparent Means Ensemble I can’t help but make comparisons with an orchestra that I am closely associated with in Stockholm, Sweden; The Great Learning Orchestra, which functions in a similar way to The Music of Transparent Means Ensemble, in that it consists of a number of musicians – mostly in Stockholm, but also elsewhere – who come from different walks of life concerning musical habitat, from rock groups to string quartets to symphony orchestras to electronic music studios, who get together in the realm of The Great Learning Orchestra to do workshops with composers (Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley, Dave Smith), and who are called to the different projects through email lists. As with The Music of Transparent Means Ensemble, The Great Learning Orchestra may look very different from time to time, from project to project, from rehearsal to rehearsal, concerning the number of attendees and the mix of instruments. You can read about The Great Learning Orchestra elsewhere at Sonoloco.

This said, I am well prepared for the experience of The Music of Transparent Means Ensemble, and I’m also very happy to find out about it! It also makes me wonder to what extent – if any – forerunners like Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra has had any significance for the formation of Music of Transparent Means. I know The Scratch Orchestra meant a lot for the occurrence of The Great Learning Orchestra, who even took its name from a work by Cornelius Cardew.

On this CD the Director of Music of Transparent Means appears with his guitar alone, reinforced by delay pedals and multiple amps. The result is as dreamy and hypnotic as all those Norwegian vinyls from Askild Haugland, and this time I didn’t have to transfer from vinyl to CD!

The title Deep Golden Flourish may hint at the experience of listening. At least it shows you a certain direction. Carpenter’s Norwegian Doppelgänger Haugland simply titles his works with the date of recording, like La Monte Young sometimes does.

There is a slight buzz from Carpenter’s amplifiers – or one of them – throughout this recording, but after a while this extraneous sound becomes a wheezing drone that achieves domiciliary rights with the guitar sounds, and it does not disturb - and after a while, as the music gets denser, it is masked altogether. It’s really just like a streak of mist across the meadow on your early morning walk, or like some barbed wire through that mist, to keep the cows in order.
Basically, this recording, about 31 minutes long, consists of a short phrase being repeated, but with a variation in the layering, or the sprouting, or how ever one wants to characterize the tiny wave motions in the music, which perhaps are better described as Impressionist reflections off of the water of a shallow river, or even like the glittering light through spring birch trees in the winds of Scandinavia; that thin, fresh smell of light and grass and Anemone Hepaticas and a temperature that calls for Craft underwear and a wind tight outer garment, plus a warm Thinsulate cap!

Depending on where you live, Deep Golden Flourish will bring home delicate nature notions, corresponding to your own frames of reference. This is part of the magic of this seemingly simple music, or, should I say, simplistic music. It is no simpler than your mind, than the life you’ve lead, than the thoughts you allow yourself to think. The sky isn’t the limit. You are.

In this context, this music is endless, timeless, without a decided set of perceptual instructions. It brings you where you are, i.e., it more clearly opens your mind to your situation, in an existential context – thus constituting a means for meditation, contemplation, introspection. Deep Golden Flourish is one of the best meditation triggers that I’ve experienced, and beautifully so.

Alex Carpenter slowly builds a denser tanglewood, in a submerged scenario; seaweed and submarine growth swaying in salty waters, stupid-looking fish with silvery coats and round mouths staring at you under the swell of an ocean.

The contemplative force of Deep Golden Flourish makes me want to use it at night, as I sometimes do with Brian Eno’s works Discreet Music, Music for Airports or Thursday Afternoon – to drift into dreams on. Carpenter’s piece is a bit too short for this, but there is a repeat button on the player!

You are set into seamless motion by this music, on journeys into yourself; unto the rendezvous with yourself that you usually put off, but which, eventually, is inevitable. Deep Golden Flourish is one of the more beautiful vehicles to that rendezvous!

---