Ingenuity is a word that comes to mind as soon as you get in earshot of this brilliant recording from Innova over in Minneapolis. A soon as I see the cover, open it an look at the picture of one of the contraptions made up out of part of music boxes, I think about guys like John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow and Harry Partch, as well as Stockhausen (but in a different world; i.e. Musik im Bauch and Tierkreis) and an obscure soul on the outskirts of Stockholm, whom you probably haven’t heard of, even though he has gotten some airplay in New York City; Sune Karlsson, who collected sounds from his tiny rental apartment and recorded 12 hours of ingenuity out of it, titling the lot Phonia Domestica – but that is another story. This story deals with a guy named John Morton, who rolls out a tingling carpet of brittle and soul-searching sounds through curved space, in which curved time works gravity on us all. It’s a fitting environment for personalities like John Morton, who through one obsession or other really get into the nitty-gritty of creativity and deliver remarkable and joyous things. So be it!

John Morton’s idea and discipline is to take apart music boxes and reconstruct them in all kinds of curious ways, playing manually – acoustically – as well as electronically manipulated, albeit always retaining a certain music boxness, which keeps the enchantment of music boxicality, i.e. childhood magic, flowing out of his compositions.

Morton is a pianist and instrument builder (obviously), but through the process of not just reconstructing and rebuilding instruments, but completely taking music boxes apart before building something else out of them, he takes his art way further into uncharted territories, through which we travel with him across the crystalline snowfields of his sound world.

In an article I read about Morton’s art he said that he was challenged by and attracted to the unpredictability of his instruments, the way the played at different speeds and how they seemed to change their sound a little each time he heard them and so forth, and this fascination of his spills over well into the experience of the listener, adding that extra glow which gives chance a chance, so to speak… (Hey, Cage, hey Lennon, what’s that mumbling…)

An interesting and revealing aspect, let on by Morton in an interview, is that he is attracted to the quality of the detail rather than the gross-form of the end result. This is very appealing to me as a listener too, not least because of my recent studies of the properties (very strange ones at that) of elementary particles (or should we say elementary waves or strings!) – but the overarching result is no less appealing, I dare say, like the innumerable reflections of a snowfield in the moonlight making up a grand expanse of Scandinavian winter.

It wouldn’t be fair not to mention John Morton’s wife, sculptor Jacqueline Shatz, with whom Morton has worked closely, among other projects with constructing of music boxes with moving sculptures. This is – even if the CD can’t display much of that – also an art for the eye. It’s a witty art, and I can’t make enough use of the word ingenuity!

On this CD Morton plays with other musicians as well, inserting the music boxes made out of music boxes in a web of instrumental sounds, even though the boxes are dead center for the most part, though with the added aspects of piano, guitar, clarinet, vibraphone, bass etcetera, not to forget the electronic manipulations of Mr. Morton.

It is interesting to note that John Morton has studied for the guy who has Morton’s surname as his first; Morton “Silver Apples of the Moon” Subotnick. On the other hand, John Morton’s art reminds me quite a bit of Australian composer Ross Bolleter and his wrecked, aged, disintegrating bar piano in Nallan Void, so the associations may lead you far astray, adding yet more lustful value to this set of compositions for music box boxes with accessories!

I hear an mbira loud and clear as the set kicks off in a meditative, hypnotic African minimalism in the horrendously beautiful Outlier; incredibly shiny, bead-like spurs of light. Brittle music box silver fall like the dust of fairy wings through the sound space, slightly off, in a juxtaposed or simply a little twisted key, and towards the conclusion I get the treat of a music box echo of a Trinidad steel band. Completely outrageous! Immediate, surprising beauty! Wonderworld music!

White Tara opens as a simple, soothing box melody, but the piano (Bolleter quality, as stated above!) adds a prickly pointillist property, and the bass throws ropes or lianas down the leafy crowns of this ant-marching procedure. I love this! I seldom get so ridiculously enthusiastic about the music that lands at the Sonoloco website, but this one has me marveling!

A Delicate Road is the main piece, bestowed upon us in three parts, with a complete duration of more than 23 minutes. Right from start it appears to be one of the more experimental or electroacoustic of the works, with a slowly tripping, climbing (in an Escher staircase, though!) music box brittleness, cut up by violent electronic slabs. This could easily render Morton a good mention or even a prize at the Bourges Competition, or Ars Electronica, Stockholm Electronic Arts Award etcetera.
As the guitars flow in slowly and gently like a calm ocean swell at dusk, the electronics take a break, and a repetitious figure in the center of the music builds a sand castle with pinnacles and towers on the shore.
The second part of A Delicate Road is very tender in a distant way, like the static and the energy of dawn brewing just below the horizon on a frosty winter’s morn, you standing out in front of the barn in your Red Wing boots, looking due east across the fields…
This has me make involuntary referrals to Bang On A Can’s version of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports, in its sparse beauty of absentminded, away-turned indifference… which however gradually turns into something not unlike a Christmas carol out of some 1940’s down home family movie, Gregory Peck and all… but in this haze of pure enchantment and wizardry, like in a dream about a dream, or in a recollection of a remembrance…
The last part starts in a dark drone, which builds up strongly, seasoned with light static and a somewhat distorted band of boxes! Then electric guitar strikes its samurai sword hither and thither through the playfulness, and this is French to me in part, in an atmosphere of Jean-Claude Risset and his Mediterranean gardens of audio inside the poetry of electronics.
The music eases out in thin beads of pearls dangling from the presence of a fairy princess dancing slowly and graciously in a moonlit forest meadow, not supposed to be perceived by human eyes, only glow worms and elves present under the stars. This is auditory magic in its own right, at times reminding me of certain sections out of Denis Smalley’s Wind Chimes.

The concluding Lulabell, on the other hand, strikes a completely different note, achieving a laid-back jazzy, early evening bar tune, vibraphone and all, beautiful ladies and stern men at their tables, drinking and smoking with no haste, listening attentively, not yet too drunk… still cautious, polite and courteous, and the yellow cabs float by outside in the circuits of downtown Manhattan, and this is the luxury of living in a human body in a temperate climate, where equilibrium of the forces of existence is… perfect, perfect… and the music recedes into the silence of yourself…