VITAL WEEKLY

For a while I thought Sofa Music was another label for the improvised music from Norway, a bit like Hubro, but the more music they release, the more I realize they are onto something bigger, less easy to classify. A crossroad if you will where improvised music meets modern classical meets microtonal music, if you catch my drift. Philippe Lauzier is perhaps a fine example of how that works. Much of his music so far was in the world of improvised music, but a month ago he surprised me with the release of 'Dôme', a cassette of works with an instrument of his own making, creating richly layered overtone music that reminded me of Organum and Paul Panhuysen. Those two pieces were very microtonal and perhaps I listen now with fresh ears to his new work and here he returns to his original instrument of choice, the bass clarinet. In the four pieces he presents here he uses a multiple tracks of his playing mixed together and he created a true beauty here. In each of the four pieces he is keen on using long form sustaining sounds and let this intertwine with each other.  In the first piece, 'Bleu Penombre' it sounds like he also using loops of acoustic sources being rubbed on the body of the clarinet. In 'On The Window Side' he drops in occasionally a sound and that adds a collage like aspect to the music; or perhaps the added value of the improvisation? It's not easy to say. Composer Phill Niblock is thanked on the cover and that is hardly a surprise. Lauzier's music is very much on a similar trajectory of long form sounds but it seems to me that he's a bit more playful, especially when he adds that extra sound, that drop or what seems to me loops of acoustic sound (which they might not be), but all along there is sine wave like sounds floating about in the best Niblock tradition.