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Thursday, July 5, 2012

Scott Miller, Carla Rees, Devices and Desires

This morning something new out of the avant camp, a fascinatingly provocative series of composed, semi-composed and improvised duets from Scott Miller and Carla Rees, Devices and Desires (Rarescale 004).

Carla Rees is a flautist of considerable accomplishment, playing with a wide variety of timbres in half, whole, quarter and micro tones. Scott Miller provides the interactive electronics with a considerable inventive flair and attention to complementary washes that have a lively, story-telling quality to them.

The six works presented on this disc flow together well, as the flute and electronics parts create an evocative soundscape of sonic advancement.

The CD results from a session between the two organized to record Miller's "Anterior/Interior". Things went so smoothly that there was time left to record a great deal more. From there the two created some remarkable free improvisations, firmly ensconced in the world of avant-new music rather than showing any influences of jazz per se, though there are times when the rhythmic pulse takes on a regularity and drive that relates as much to comtemporary vernacular as it does to Subotnik's classic "Silver Apples of the Moon."

The result is music that has some of the innovative rigor of middle-to-late-middle-period Stockhausen, though the music has its own sound.

An impressive collaboration that will appeal to the flute-lover and the lover of the new lurking within (I would hope) all of us.

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