GELBART - Vermin

A quirky and unpredictable experimenter, Israeli artist Adi Gelbart draws on television, electronic toys and video games, soundtracks and electroacoustic music to craft a visionary, uncategorizable yet highly enjoyable form of pastiche, in the manner of Dan Deacon (with whom he has in fact collaborated): "Mass Hypnosis By Proxy" (2008), "Tokomon" (2002), "Four Track Improvisations" (2003), even a full remake of the Beatles' "Please Please Me" (2007).

A breathtaking showcase of his talent can also, and above all, be found in "Vermin" (2013), starting with tracks that are short but far from trivial, like the parody of acid-rock found in "These Machines Are Translators" — stale, childish, hilarious and off-key, shaking up a backdrop of chaotic distortion — and the dumbed-down drum'n'bass of "Collecting Seeds", with its whistled melody trapped in an analog electronic weave reminiscent of Raymond Scott, which in its dazed harmony works as theme and variations.

The blend of charleston and samba, along with the interstellar keyboard tour-de-force à la Terry Riley and the note-snowstorms of "The Device", is another prime example, while a new carousel of variations like "It Speaks" settles into a danceable groove (complete with jackhammers thrown into the electronic party), and the video-game sounds played with solemn Bach-like poise in "Meloda" fold back into circus vaudeville, almost like a remix of a Nino Rota soundtrack, topped off with a space-jazz coda. Even the extremely brief "Song For A Dying Earth" reaches for experimentation, blending meditative enchantment with a sci-fi ballad.

The 18 minutes split across the two parts of "Vermin" then allow the composer to develop these ideas further. The first part opens with a pompous, kitsch-blockbuster preamble, after which sinister vibrations and oscillations find comets and quasars streaking across their suspended atmosphere. It's a whirlwind of sonic effects at varying speeds, with a retro flavor that eventually takes shape as a jazz quartet — first noirish, then echoing the cosmic jazz-rock of Miles Davis — and even a moment of dissonant chamber strings recalling Penderecki's techniques, before finally giving way to a concert of industrial presses. In the second part, a tingling swarm of liquid, robotic sounds takes over, and immense gongs set off a majestic ritual. A dreamlike organ duets with a sort of theremin, resulting in a more conventional sci-fi-soundtrack approach.

While the first part is worthy of standing as an instrumental appendix to the Residents' "Meet The Residents", the second part, by contrast, feels like a crude, coarsened trivialization of Tangerine Dream's "Atem".

A thoroughly mixed-technique exercise, released as a 12" mini-album, drawing energy and strength from comic-book imagery, a multitude of sources, including live-played instruments (clarinet by Berlin-based Benautik on "Meloda"), and even different disciplines altogether: "Vermin" is the soundtrack to an animated short made three years earlier, conceived, written and produced by the composer together with veteran Felix Kubin.

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24/05/2014