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Why would that be, you ask? Just read Kotche’s sleeve note, “Nigerian master musician Tony Allen and jazz legend Ed Blackwell initially inspired this piece. I wrote my impressions of some of their drum grooves in the form of complex vamps performed on drum kit. The formal structure is a stretched duplication of one of these phrases. Each voice of that vamp was then replaced with another vamp. The sounds of the original phrases were then enhanced by synthetic sounds. This wasn’t done to disguise the piece’s origins but to show their lasting relevance in a fresh context.”

What that sounds like is some manic journalist typing in African on some Detroit drum machine (with a touch of echo). Top track but can the rest of the CD match this?

Well it’s a good start as the lead track is a variant version of Steve Reich’s 1972 handclapping duet. The combination of vibes, drums and other percussion gives the piece a gamelan feel and it ends with the first part of the ‘Mobile’ theme.

The title track, ‘Mobile’ is a three-part piece inspired by, of all things, mobiles. This is Kotche’s musical representation of the light sculptures of a mobile, at rest and in motion. He says, “throughout the record I investigate the idea of negative or opposite rhythm by utilising the intrinsic spaces. This leads to the exploration of rhythm through composition as an extension of my drumming.”

This exploration can vary between ambient and soothing to rock like, to bordering on noise. So you’re not going to get a drum solo that’s going to be jazzy enough for a Dingwalls crowd, more of a mix of Detroit’s Movement, experimentalists like Unsafe 2 and global beats. The ‘opus’ track is a long drum solo, ‘Monkey Chant’ which is based on the monkey army battle from the Hindu tale of Rama and Ravana. The cricket noises are actual crickets but the rest of it is his electro-acoustic drum kit (which looks very experimental).

Of the last 3 tracks, ‘Fantasy on a Shona Theme for solo vibraphone’ is the closest to easier listening. Although, ‘Reductions or Imitations’ is a mix of two songs (The Late Greats’, ‘What I Don’t Believe’) on piano and vibes, it won’t be a MTV mash-up hit, whilst ‘Individual Train’ is as stretched as a drum ‘beat’ can be and sounds like a oxymoron of a industrial relaxation tape.

So whilst it was the obvious track ‘Projections of (what) Might…’ that got me into this album, it was ‘Monkey Chant’ that I keep coming back to. I wonder if he’s available for Unsafe 3; with Daedelus? Now that would be experimental.

Reviewed: Glenn Kotche - Mobile (Nonesuch) Cat. No. 7559 799927-2 Release date: 2006
1. Clapping Music Variations 4:45
2. Mobile Parts 1 & 2 5:42
3. Mobile Part 3 (2:38)
4. Projections of (what) Might… (4:55)
5. Monkey Chant (11:29)
6. Reductions or Imitations (3:18)
7. Individual Trains (3:54)
8. Fantasy on a Shona Theme (4:06)

Links:
www.glennkotche.com
www.nonesuch.com Nonesuch’s background is interesting as in 1963, Jac Holzman (of Elektra Records) wanted to set up a label specialised in classical music where records were as cheap to buy as classic literature in paperback.