This amazing set of sounding durations owes its brilliance to master instrument innovator Tom Nunn of San Francisco. He built all the instruments utilized on this recording, which is a live adventure that took place at the Crucible Steel Gallery in San Francisco in the fall of 1997. The CD on Ramp Records was released in 1998, and though it took a few years for it to reach my humble Scandinavian reviewing quarters, it was well worth the wait.

The performers – who are all mentioned above – are experienced improvisers, but hardly any of them had any ensemble performing experience on these instruments.

Tom Nunn explains that all his instruments originally were thought of as solo instruments, pertaining also to the various pitches, which is why an ensemble performance may produce strange sonic webs indeed.

The CD booklet explains that three different types of instruments are used herein: electroacoustic percussion boards (EPBs), space plates and balloon/slap drums.

The electroacoustic percussion boards are high-grade 3/4” plywood sheets of various sizes, with sound making devices attached, such as threaded steel rods, bronze rods, wires, nails, springs, textures surfaces and more. These attachments are then struck, scraped, plucked, strummed, rubbed or bowed with small implements like wood stick mallets, knitting needles, combs, guitar picks, small violin bows etcetera. (These ways of setting the objects in vibrating and thus sounding movements remind me of the Swedish artist Sune Karlsson (1946) who applied similar techniques in his gargantuan 12-hour work “Phonia Domestica” in 1988 in Sweden.)

Space plates are – according, again, to the booklet – stainless steel sheets to which are welded different lengths of bronze brazing rods, arranged in curved rows symmetrically related to facilitate two-handed bowing of the rods. The rods rest on inflated balloons in small buckets. The elasticity of the balloons and the sympathetic response of the rods create a rich, resonant sound.

Balloon/slap drums are 2,5” PVC pipes och different lengths. Some have balloon membrane heads and others cardboard heads which flap loosely against the end of the tubes and slap the openings when struck, causing a biting pitch that is a harmonic on the tube. Each set of drums has 26 different tube lengths, i.e. 26 differently pitched drums! In this recording two sets were used.

So, after that technical introduction – which is more or less copied out of the booklet -: how does it all sound? Well, it sure is an interesting and compelling set of tunes Tom Nunn and his associates have produced, especially for the ears of seeker and explorers in the field of sound and rhythm.

The first track is called “Wild Thing”, conceived by Moe Staiano, engaging the whole ensemble. It commences with dark, lurking thumps, which ever so slightly are joined by metallic, thin scrapings and woody percussive attacks. However, after a short while a distinct rhythm is taking hold, ravaging through the soundscape like a gamelan mimicry, which the whole ensemble soon adheres to. The impression is that of a western percussion ensemble gone completely eastern – Indonesian! – and with flying colors. It is very catchy and very beautiful.
Half way through the piece the rhythm is giving way to some kind of Partchian meditation, as glissandi and bowing sounds from the innermost reaches of the ensemble are free to pop and whistle, thump and roll, hit and caress, twang and wheeze. This part definitely reminds me of Harry Partch, and I’m sure the orchestra is indebted to him here. The meditation somehow transforms into a crazed frenzy of percussive details, laid on us without mercy, until the music takes on the guise of an industrial waste dump in havoc… and even that slowly and gradually dying down into minute and gentle afterthoughts of brittle and soft soundings.

“The Final Frontier” – track 2 – is a free improvisation, i.e. with no one giving directions or basic structural ideas, as in most of the other pieces. A mystical, foggy feeling spreads slowly across the hushed-down listening space, as shadowy shapes move to and fro, in a lost, lonely harbor state of mind. It’s a haunting atmosphere all across, as heavier metal bangs bang away, while an unseen monster tries to saw his way out of rusty chains. Heavy weights are inched sideways, and a crack opens into the mind of a savage. Giant shoulders apply their force to a heavy roll of sheet steel, conquering inertia as the roll turns over and falls away. Elves and other representatives of the little ones labor in murky corners, having sprinkly metallic sounds shower the surroundings.

Track 3 – “Panoply” – was constructed by Doug Carroll. You see the light of dawn through a curtain of bamboo as the percussion gently ushers you into open meadows of the mind. Brittle, almost watery percussion joins in, in glittering, sparkly sprays of eastern thinking.
This is the longest piece with its almost ten minutes, and probably rightly so. The structure is so fine, and the counterpoint – because there is one, at times! – so finely threaded, that it makes you wonder how much is improvisation, how much composition. The wooden, brownish, soft-spoken percussive sounds and the watery, brittle sprays work nicely together, as the piece moves you into meditative and introvert atmospheres, in the last minutes changing gear and edging into highly rhythmical – but still sensibly soft-spoken – patterns.

“Primary Phallic” is a Jim Hearon piece. It has more of the scratchy, edgy, improvisational feel that you’d expect from this bunch. I’m especially attracted to the metallic stroking sounds that sort of rise up like canopies, only to fall back down again, like air bubbles in the pancake in the hot pan, or methane gas rising in bubbles out of the swamps. You hear forgotten peoples of Neanderthalic reminiscences poke their wooden sticks in hollow depressions in the rock, ages and ages ago.

Ed Herrmann’s compositional or structural contribution is “Hat Creek Chorus”, featuring the whole ensemble. This is also one of the longer tracks, almost ten minutes. The beginning is obscure, silent – but boiling with activity like a pond in the forest, full of sub-merged insects giving off all kinds of intricate small sounds, like submarine Morse codes in secrecy in the dusk below the surface, where only remnants of light reaches down like long, narrow fingers of bliss. At this stage the piece almost sounds like an instrumental version of David Dunn’s “Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond”, sporting hydrophonic recordings of submarine insects in freshwater ponds in Africa and North America. Mermaids strum their coral reef harps, and surprised fishy creatures withdraw into their caves with protruding, open mouths, while quicker beings disappear in a jiffy, with a flash of their tail fins.

“The Batlands” is one of Tom Nunn’s pieces. It is a free improvisation without intentional prepositions, featuring a solo on just one instrument; the bat. It opens with a jingle jangle feeling of tiled stove hinges, later inching into a medieval painting on long, sharp skates through the centuries. As Nunn some distance into the piece plays his instrument in a percussive manner, visions of Indian instruments rise in my mind; Shivkumar Sharma’s santoor - and later, in screeching strokes: Pandit Ram Narayan’s sarangi. When Tom Nunn further investigates his instrument he even makes it behave like some electroacoustic machine out of the oeuvre of French guru Jean Schwarz in Studio Celia, in a teenage breaking of the voice into cocky bass beat strummings of the bat.

Track 7 is “Tablatura”, a free improvisation on three of the instruments. The immediate impression is that of a post-modern chamber piece played by a truly modern ensemble, possibly from the Finnish 1980s, exploring intricate, complicated, minute fractions of sound. The percussive sounds are shining like the wrapping paper of expensive chocolate candy bars, or like the reflective, clearly colored balls in a Christmas tree. The sonic table is completely laden with exotic goodies, all in bright, shiny colors!

Next piece by Tom Nunn himself is “Processional”. It features the full ensemble plus balloon/slap drums. Birdlike chirps and sparse, gently brittle silvery incidents envision a meadow in an enchanted forest of the hereafter inside my imagination. Everything is very, very careful; tender. The progression is picking up both speed and intensity along the way, and sudden – but not actually stunning – chunks of more brutal sounds hit hard towards the end. Beautiful and mysterious!

The last piece – “Singularity” – is also a work by Tom Nunn. Again the full ensemble kicks in. The start could well be a regular symphony orchestra gearing up, tuning their instruments, finding their positions on stage – but gradually a hushed feeling of stretched-out life (on the bed, starring at the ceiling) evolves, and out in the kitchen the wife is making coffee, taking a pause to juggle sugar cubes which eventually fall and spread out across the kitchen table.
A mad, marching section grows overwhelmingly and shoves everything else aside, and there’s no more time for starring at the ceiling. Gotta get up and jump! Hi hoe!

The applause at the end reminds you that this indeed has been a live performance, which makes the magnificent result even more baffling. You would have thought, for sure, that these pieces were thought out and recorded many times before the final result on CD was ready, but everything is, indeed, live! Great music! Great sounds!