JIM DENLEY - Cut Air

Millennia separate the dawn of primitive artistic expression from the attempt to return to a “primitivist” expression: from the influence of tribal artifacts on European pictorial avant-gardes to the non-signifying language of performances by Meredith Monk, the revolutionary currents of the twentieth century have paved the way for a highly diversified exploration of the possible interactions with reality, stripped of the cumbersome cultural superstructures of the past, reaching back to long before the invention of language, writing and composition.

Incidentally, percussion and wind instruments were humanity's first sonic extensions: stones, hides and worn bones became objects of acoustic production with no reference to any dimension beyond the merely physical.

Active since the early 80s – and winner of the Prix Italy in 1989 – instrumentalist and composer Jim Denley (already with Mural and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra) reflects on the element that alters forms in an invisible way: air, wind, the vital breath capable of acting entirely unseen, slowly and without pause. It is the soul of the Earth that also inspired Celina Rokona, who gave voice to the shamanic-derived music of the Solomon Islands performing with just two bamboo canes, struck and blown at once.

To her is dedicated the second of the long solos of “Cut Air”, for prepared bass flute: music as an atmospheric agent, matter present yet elusive, the spontaneous quiver and roar of an era in which no distinction existed between nature and civilization – so that, presumably, their sounds too were indistinguishable.

By our current taxonomy, we would not hesitate to find affinities with minimalism in the regular repetition of keys struck like perforations along the continuous line of breath; but, as said, Denley's non-descriptive monologue predates all of this, pursuing the timeless sonic ecology of the maestro Salvatore Sciarrino, who, in his vast solo flute output, achieved with great sensitivity a mimesis with the pure lexemes of untouched elements.

But the fascination with indigenous tradition, nurtured in his Australian homeland, seems to have left a far deeper mark than the jazz and “classical” avant-gardes: if Denley releases today his first entirely solo album on the Sofa label, it is for its intrinsic refusal to situate itself, perhaps the only trait common to the many directions of contemporary experimentation, which, especially in the Norwegian “no man's land,” finds ample room to rewrite from scratch and advance its own natural history of sound.

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24/04/2017