Live At The Croc by Slow Music

All Together Now...

In a culture where doing your “own thing” and doing it as loudly, and as conspicuously as possible is now the norm, there’s something both novel and quaint when you come across music as unselfish and as egoless as this.

Recorded at The Crocodile Club in Seattle last year, alongside Rieflin on keyboards there’s Peter Buck (guitar), Fred Chalenor (basses) Mat Chamberlain (drums), Robert Fripp (guitar) and Hector Zazou (keyboards).

Given the firepower lined up on this disc its especially heartening that this should be so. Proof I suppose that beyond the hype of the headlines about this being an REM / Ministry/ Crimson “supergroup” is a bunch of guys who really just want the opportunity to play and see what happens.

There’s a tentative quality about many of the nine untitled pieces that make up this short album; an exploratory first stab in which not making a sound holds as much kudos as those who do.

There are sonic precedents, and in this respect Slow Music’s associations appear avowedly European. Throughout its 35 minutes, flashes of David Toop and Max Eastley’s sparse elegy, "The Divination of the Bowhead Whale" (from their 1975 album New & Rediscovered Musical Instruments) spring to mind, so too the artful composite structures sketched out in Sylvian’s "Steel Cathedrals."

It’s an exotic collection as tiny knots of sounds whoop, whir and sizzle as though they belonged to some humid cyber rainforest.

Slow of course doesn’t always equate with sedate. There are several moments when the transient mesh of tones and textures build to surprisingly intense levels. The last track, with its booming crescendo coming from out of the blue, is a prime and exciting example.

With the ensemble sourcing musical materials from both the digital and analogue worlds, it’s almost impossible to tell who is saying what. Not that it really matters.

“Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much” was the advice John Wayne once gave about the art of acting. It’s a minimalist philosophy that easily finds an application with improvisation in general and Slow Music in particular. And we all know that The Quiet Man packed a punch when he needed to.