Ash 8.8 - Thomas Ankersmit - Live in Utrecht
Released: 2010CD in Jewel Case
1 track, 39:18
Photography by Alexandra Leykauf
Track Listing
1: Live in Utrecht, 39:18
Recorded on November 17th 2007 at Rumor, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Thomas Ankersmit: Serge analogue modular synthesizer, computer, alto saxophone. Pre-recorded saxophone and reel-to-reel parts composed by Valerio Tricoli, with source material by Ankersmit.
Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye.
Thomas Ankersmit is a 30+ year old saxophonist, electronic musician and installation artist born and raised in the Netherlands and now primarily based in Berlin who combines abstract, intensely focused saxophone playing with hyper-kinetic analogue synth and computer improvisation. He also creates installation pieces that use sound, infrasound and "modifications to the acoustic characters of spaces" that disrupt the viewer/listener's perception of the exhibition space and their presence within it. He frequently works together with New York minimalist Phill Niblock and Sicilian electroacoustic improviser Valerio Tricoli, and other collaborators, mostly for live performances, have included Tony Conrad, Maryanne Amacher, Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm and Borbetomagus.
Reviews:
Dusted (USA):
For a moment at the beginning of Live in Utrecht, just a fleeting moment, one can hear what sounds like the untreated sound of a solitary saxophone. Very quickly, a few conspicuous glitches hint at what’s to come, and before the listener has time to settle in, the alto saxophone is afloat in a sea of clones and electronically augmented cousins. When Dutch-born Berliner Thomas Ankersmit is described in print, the saxophone often comes first, but on this, his official solo long-player, Ankersmit’s horn is just an ingredient in a much larger stew, and, for long stretches, it’s absent completely. Live in Utrecht, recorded in 2007, mixes Ankersmit’s saxophone with analog synth and electronics in a dynamic performance that comes at the listener from all sides, as unpredictable as it is self-assured. Saxophone drones bookend the proceedings, with all manner of action in between.
Live in Utrecht is an unsettling listen, though agreeably so: its disparate frequencies, quick cuts and hard pans can mess with the mind rather easily. What one may initially take in as a glitchy minimalism is soon weaving its way through the listener’s cortices, playing tricks on the ears as the sound bounces from one channel to another in an immersive and tightly crafted 40 minutes of unceasing activity. Live in Utrecht borders on overstimulation in rare moments, but Ankersmit’s relentlessness is an advantage. Even when the bottom drops out at the performance’s halfway mark, Ankersmit doesn’t simply use the quiet as contrast. Instead, he cultivates from it a new form of growth, building high-pitched tones that swoop and swirl like barely perceptible gnats into a robust spate of upper register inhabitants, not half as loud as the disc’s beginning, but equally intense. Ankersmit gently coaxes the music back into a sax-y squall, adept as ever at making transitions and staying one step ahead of himself with a keen ear for evolution and the patience to make it effective. There can be excitement in watching a musician grapple with sounds that threaten to escape his or her control, but precision can be equally arresting, and Ankersmit wrangles his material beautifully from beginning to end with a deft touch and a canny sense of timing.
Ankersmit’s discography is slim. He’s been performing for more than a decade, and has worked with some heavy hitters (Phill Niblock, Kevin Drumm and Jim O’Rourke, to name a few), but seems intent on only allowing his best work into the marketplace (how’s that for bucking the trend?). As such, Ankersmit remains largely unheard. If he managed a few more albums of this quality, it won’t remain that way. [Adam Strohm]
The Wire (UK):
If it is easy to layer sounds together to make music of a droning nature, then it is particularly difficult to do it well. To make interesting drone music in a live situation is an even more accomplished task, but one that Thomas Ankersmit overcomes on this 39 minute live set recorded in 2007. Originally a saxophonist, Ankersmit constructs the intense, prickly music here by adding analogue synthesizer, computer and prerecorded reel-to-reel tape parts composed by his close collaborator Valerio Tricoli to his acoustic alto sax. The end result is a quietly seething mass of constantly shifting, metallic sounding sheets of sound that form a laminal bed into which Ankersmit sprays shards of angular, abrupt matter. Like bits of broken glass spread across a beach, the music’s softer, floatier elements are constantly undercut by these more sinister intrusions. There is no sense of comfort here, on the occasions when the music’s more frenetic moments burn themselves out and the drifting underbelly is exposed there remains a feeling of uncertainty, an edginess that suggests a blast of rasping electronics or a shriek of alto sax might suddenly assault your ears.
Most if not all of the sounds we hear seem to have originated in the saxophone, but only in a few places are we left with much more than faint memories. The music evokes industrial sounds, whirring, churning manufacturing processes, the scream of an engine’s loose fan belt, even distressed bagpipes in places. From all of this, Ankersmit constructs a musical world that feels alive and capable of going anywhere, and yet also manages to give the music a strong sense of structured purpose, a degree of compositional control unusual in this area of live performance. It is the fine balance between the sense of chaos that threatens to pull everything apart and the controlled formation of the music into clearly defined sections of differing intensities that raises the work above that of so many of Ankersmit’s contemporaries and makes this such a captivating recording. [Richard Pinnell]
kinamuzik (Netherlands):
Live in Utrecht is de eerste officiële cd die Thomas Ankersmit op de mensheid loslaat. Deze liveopname uit 2007 onderstreept meteen de belofte die de naar Berlijn uitgeweken Nederlander in zich draagt.
Ankersmit maakt naast (geluids)installaties ook op zichzelf staande improvisaties waarbij hij zich voornamelijk op saxofoon, analoge synths en computers baseert. Live in Utrecht vangt aan met monotone, abstracte saxofoonklanken die met tal van elektronische afwijkingen geconfronteerd worden.
Deze wisselwerking tussen semistatisch uitgesponnen klankentapijten en flitsende onregelmatigheden, die zich als luizen in de pels van de compositie nestelen, zorgt voor een gespannen textuur. In de loop van de opname wordt deze spanningsboog op drie verschillende manieren gemaakt, waarna in de goede regel van de dialectiek de synthese een nieuwe voedingsbodem vormt.
Dat de muziek ook op cd overeind blijft, spreekt in het voordeel van Ankersmit. Zijn eerdere samenwerkingen met Tony Conrad, Maryanne Amacher, Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm en Borbetomagus hadden de verwachtingen hoog gespannen. Ankersmit lost ze in.
Boomkat (UK):
'Live In Utrecht' is Thomas Ankersmit's first official release, appearing on Touch sister label, Ash International. It documents a live performance in late 2007, featuring Ankersmit manipulating Serge analogue modular synthesizer, computer, and his favoured instrument, the alto saxophone, together with reel-to-reel parts composed by long standing collaborator Valerio Tricoli. Over the duration Ankersmit investigates vivid electro-acoustic spaces with a deft appreciation of minute detail and spatial awareness resulting in a sequence of intriguing improvised tonal textures. Ankersmit has also worked with Maryanne Amacher, Tony Conrad, Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm and Phill Niblock.
Brainwashed (USA):
Recorded live, this 38 minute piece mixes live with pre-recorded elements, pairing Ankersmit’s saxophone playing with taped versions of himself, analog synthesizer, and some digital treatments as well. The recurring motif becomes the sound of his horn, sometimes in its pure, traditional format, such as towards the beginning of the performance where it is in tightly clipped bursts. Other times it is dissected and rebuilt into a different beast entirely, such as at the ending moments of the performance where pieces are looped and closely multi-tracked together to the point it resembles a mini-orchestra of sax players. The close, but slightly different pitches create unnatural harmonics as layers are snipped away, leaving only one singular loop at the end.
Between these natural reference points, there is a slew of digital and analog treated sounds that are placed together to create an idiosyncratic electro-acoustic sound that stands on its own. The snipped and looped horns at the beginning are eventually digitally deconstructed, leaving processed sound fragments that are far from identifiable to become the focus, with the most subtle of underlying melody to be perceived.
For a single live performance, it is a varied one, with a great deal of diversity in dynamics and structure. Clanging, raw high speed sounds and feedback-like swells clash to create an abrasive, gratingly harsh noises that will just as quickly retreat, leaving only a bass drone and high frequency textures. Some segments resemble a CD being decoded in the wrong order, with blobs of sound coming out seemingly at random. Mixing the high and low pitched elements does occur more than once, at one point there’s subwoofer rattling bass frequencies with ultrasonic, tweeter shredding treated horn noises that pulls a page from the early noise scene. Other moments sit more nicely in the middle, more comfortable frequency range, with what sounds like a duet between a broken AM radio and a laptop-based didgeridoo forming one of the closing segments of the performance.
While he uses familiar building blocks, the results on this album sound like no other artist, and considering his connections with Niblock and Conrad, Ankersmit takes a more maximalist approach to sound than would be expected. It isn’t an easy listen, with its frequently abrasive frequencies and erratic, jumpy structure. However, there are so many nuances and subtlety contained within that the more difficult moments are worth enduring, even for those who aren’t as fond of raw and harsh sounds as I. [Creaig Dunton]
Just Outside (USA):
It's been a while since I've heard from Ankersmit. I recall, maybe 9 - 10 years ago, when I was writing for All Music, that he sent me a 3-inch of solo alto that I reviewed for the site (still there!). I think he may have printed only 100 or so copies and I like very much the notion that I could place it on such a site, on equal footing with the latest major pop release. According to the accompanying insert, this is his first full-length CD and it's a damned good one. Recorded in November 2007 - I'm not sure if he was actively engaged in collaborating with Phill Niblock but it seems to me one can clearly hear an influence. Working with electronics and tapes as well as his alto (some of the tapes including pre-recorded saxophone by Valerio Tricoli), he constructs a dense swarming drone in some ways not unlike various aspects of Niblock's work. But with the drone, there's a ton of dirtiness, of sand in the mix, of harshness. Indeed, the electronic sputters that weave alongside the electronic hums and saxophone squeals have such a physical, visceral presence that I several times looked anxiously at my speakers fearing some loose connection or other damage. But those sounds play a crucial role in the first half of the 39 minute performance, removing the music from a simple, if dense, drone, causing a real discomfort in the listener, like sharp jabs to the chin. Riveting stuff.
Almost halfway through, it subsides into somewhat less grainy territory, full of keening and flutter, with some strong subsonics. It's less aggressive, but perhaps more alien-sounding; one can imagine a live situation with the various sounds engulfing the listener from multiple speakers. Within ten minutes, it's surging mightily, only to be lopped off once again. But back it comes, this time the drone is richer, more strident, retaining some grain but really concentrating on the "loud hum", sounding like bass vuvuzelas processed to remove some of the burr.
It's a powerful performance - glad to have Ankersmit back.
blog.monsieurdelire.com:
Impressionnant, ce premier opus officiel de Thomas Ankersmit (après un mini-CD et des figurations sur des compilations). Ankersmit est saxophoniste à la base, mais il travaille aussi beaucoup avec les synthétiseurs et ordinateurs, dans une recherche microtonale qui rapelle celle de Phill Niblock (avec qui il travaille régulièrement). Une longue pièce de 40 minutes, en deux temps séparés par un long quasi-silence qui permet presque une remise à zéro. Hantant, bourdonnant, avec des juxtapositions de phase déstabilisantes (vers la fin) et un beau travail de dialogues avec bande (au début). Très convaincant.
An impressive official debut CD from Thomas Ankersmit (after an EP and appearances on compilations). Ankersmit is basically a saxophonist, although he also works a lot with analog synths and computers, in microtonal experiments bringing to mind Phill Niblock (with whom he works regularly). A long 40-minute track in two sections separated by a long near-silence that almost allows for a reset. Haunting, droning, with unsettling phase overlaps (toward the end) and some fine dialogue with a tape part (in the beginning). Very convincing.
Titel (Germany):
Unschwer zu erraten: auch Thomas Ankersmit´s Debut „Live in Utrecht“ ist live eingespielt. Der 30-jährige Niederländer spielt Saxophon und elektronische Instrumente. Er erarbeitet Installationen, die sich mit Klang, Infraschall und Änderungen der akustischen Eigenschaften von Räumen befassen. Die Aufnahme besteht aus einem einzigen, knapp 40 minütigen Stück, das bereits vorher aufgenommene (verfremdete) Sax-Parts des sizilianischen Improvistionskünstlers Valerio Tricoli integriert, der auch man der Komposition beteiligt war. Mit Hilfe eines analogen Modular-Synthies und computergenerierten Sounds entsteht eine flirrende, fiepende Soundkulisse. Minuten lang besteht die Aufnahme fast nur aus einem Pfeifen, das eher an ein Störgeräusch erinnert, bevor das ganze wieder etwas Fahrt aufnimmt. Hinterlässt mich eher ratlos - ist im entsprechenden räumlichen Setting live sicher etwas anderes, als auf der heimischen Anlage. Nur für Spezialisten und unerschrockene Klangforscher ohne Haustier zu empfehlen.
Polychromatic (France):
Westzeit (Germany):
