Ed Chang Reviews
Ed Chang
: Marble/Latch
Posted 6/12/2007
players: Ed Chang (electric guitar)
A careful work exploring the possibilities of continuous electric
guitar drones developed over extended periods of time. Featuring smooth
transitions between the different sound masses, the static character is
the result of a careful mastery; the balance involved in handling
feedback being akin to that of high-tension wires. Quite subtle in its
approach, the materials are displayed with a certain Indian tanpura
quality in the slow unfolding of overtones. Other tracks present
harsher surfaces, with noise elements that emphasize rougher textures
and larger doses of processing.
Un cuidadoso trabajo que explora las posibilidades de pedales continuos
de guitarra eléctrica desarrollados durante amplios periodos de tiempo.
Caracterizada por las suaves transiciones entre las diferentes masas
sonoras, el carácter estático resulta de una cuidada maestría, ya que
la habilidad implícita en el manejo de acoples es semejante a la
manipulación de cables de alta tensión. De planteamiento sutil, los
materiales ofrecen un cierto parecido con la tambura India en lo
tocante a su lento despliegue armónico. Otros cortes presentan
superficies más ásperas, con elementos ruidistas que enfatizan texturas
más bastas y una mayor dosis de procesado.
http://modisti.com/system/image-vp9032.html
Ed Chang
& Han Degc - Nois und Stringe
Reviewed 2006-05-24
Appropriately titled: Avante guitar playing a la Marc Ribot/Derek
Bailey along with noise, thunderous at times, in the vein of Massonna,
Merzbow, Solmania. Schitzophrenic madness, just lovely. Your mom will
think the cd player is broken. Fine advanced stuff.
1) harsh japanoise’esque microphone manipulation over avante dissonant
acoustic guitar, nice
2) noise is thunderous, heavy onslaught, guitar maintains its own world
3) noise is clangy, along with guitar
4) more insanity
5) sparser somehow, vocal quality in places, very Ribot
6) longer, much sparser, random
KFJC review
http://zookeeper.stanford.edu/index.php?s=byAlbumKey&n=809096&q=&action=search&session
Ed Chang & Han Degc - Nois und Stringe
This is one for 3am when the upstairs
neighbours' party has degenerated to the point of mass pogoing to the
strains of "Little Red Corvette" (don't titter – this actually
happened). Nois und Stringe indeed, it sounds like Olaf Rupp
jamming along with what could either be Kevin Drumm on a very bad day
or a field recording of a nuclear weapons test. Amazingly, Han Degc's
acoustic guitar manages to survive the assaults of the Noise Machine
remarkably well, but it remains a spectacularly dangerous combination
of instruments, and Chang's not in the business of making any
concessions to his playing partner, even in the final track (dedicated
to the memory of Hugh Davies), which negotiates a kind of tense
ceasefire. Listening to the album all the way through is rather like
hanging out at the scene of a car crash out of sheer morbid curiosity
waiting to see if anyone got killed. Of course, if you play this at
cow-rending volume in the wee small hours, it's you the pigs will haul
down the station, not the bastards upstairs partying like it's 1999.–DW
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2006/06jun_text.html#11
Ed Chang & Han Degc - Nois und Stringe
Chang resurfaces in this duo with classical guitarist Han Degc, here wielding rougher-edged devices, presumably including his homemade “noise machine”. As Degc’s playing is entirely acoustic as well as indirectly referencing classical attacks and techniques, a certain tension is created and maintained between him and the extremely brutal, electric noise-storm generated by Chang. ...
Brian Olewnick - Bagatellen
http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/001332.html
Ed Chang & Han Degc - Nois und Stringe
This six-track release from Quodiblet Records featuring Ed Chang on Noise Machine and Han Degc on Acoustic Guitar comes with a sticker on the cover proclaiming, "at the intersection of abrasion and vibration" and " If Merzbow and Segovia Got busy "! First claim.... Agreed.... second claim ... with Segovia on PCP ...maybe. I personally enjoyed a large portion of this work, but it's not for your average music lover. You won't be taking this one to the keg party.
The first couple of tracks are fused sonic landscapes delivered like some alien machine language forced through a transistor radio set on a classical station..... Only the classical music has been run through a Burroughsian cut up session. At one point it had me fearing for the survival of my speakers.
"Posaunend" the 3rd track is a cool percussive romp that has a surprising amount of intended melody. It sounds like a giant amplified working factory full of loose bits of metal, melodic guitar snippets, pigs under stress and empty wood boxes. The factory then being tossed down a large mountain made of semi hollow boulders. This is a great track and alone worth purchasing this work if you think you might want to experience what I am trying to describe.
The last track is dedicated to Hugh Davies. As part of a well-documented 40-year career, Hugh was heralded as the worlds leading electro-musicologist and new instrument maker. Zirpend", recorded in his honor, is a sparse, inquisitive jagged lope with alternating short explosions of speedy atonal classical guitar and stretched string mutilations. This guitar work comes across as so physical at times, I wonder if it may be to the point of wood and fret damage. The noise machine tandems along with a frenzied electric animal gurgle / grate of feedback and howl.
With all of the verbal overload above, you might have a hard time understanding how Nois und String has brought forth calm in our house at a time when this is no small achievement. Let me explain. Iggy, our new 10-week-old kitten, has been a holy terror on household items and sleep patterns. Strangely, all scratching / running / jumping / climbing stops when Ed and Han get going. She just sits and stares from speaker to speaker, with the occasional head twitch or tail flick as the sonic kitty valium short circuits her need to expend energy..... ahhh .... Thank-you
Rating 7/10
Special Kitty Sedative Rating 10/10
Ron Kirsch
Left Hip Magazine
Picture Show
Ed
Chang’s
‘Picture Show’ is, apparently, a theater piece of some kind. The too-cool notes make this difficult to
ascertain with any degree of certainty.
The music stands up solidly on its own, in any case. Each little scene has something entertaining
about it. Selections from the broad
palette of available textures and sonorities are well-made, and the
players are
good. Even with all the Frithian
chirping, there’s very little aimless screeching, and each of the
musicians is
given plenty of space. It’s difficult to
tell where the composition stops and the free improvisation starts. (Where performers/composers are talented, I
generally consider this to be a good thing).
Chang knows his musicians’ skills and uses them intelligently. You never have an opportunity to get bored
with a riff that might get tiring if its propagator were going
full-blast on
every cut. Violinist Samara Lubelski,
for example, plays nicely, but disappears after the first scene. Pianist Elaine Kaplinsky, reed player Blaise
Siwula, vocalist Anastasia Cook and drummer Christine Bard are utilized
with
restraint, but all turn in great performances when they are given the
green
light. Chang, too, lays out on a couple
of the segments, and changes up his delivery regularly, from
Bailey-esque
thrashing to full speed, single note riffing, to strumming ninth chords
like a
funkmeister. He even folds in some
outrageous vocals in the middle of Act II.
Bassist Reuben Radding should also be credited for helping to
maintain
the open, uncoagulated feel throughout the disk. There
are some crazy dialogues here that
revitalize one’s faith in call and response.
While the music itself is hard to classify (something like a
cross
between John Wolf Brennan, Michael Jeffrey Stevens, and Fred Frith),
its
pervasive lightness of touch and high quality are unmistakeable. The parts that are supposed to be disturbing
are disturbing; the ostensibly pretty parts are actually pretty; and
the funny
parts are genuinely funny. Most
important, ‘Picture Show’ is never boring.
How many audio recordings of ‘performance art’ can back up a
claim like
that?
Cadence Nov 1998, Walter
Horn
Picture
Show
Before I
played this CD I checked out the liner notes, trying to get a handle on
the
musical organization methods which the notes seemed to be addressing. Here’s an excerpt: “…concentrated
on improvisational own personality become a part of as
specific ideas and ‘sounds’ sides which surface without its performance
by
interpretive need not even be performed because to be fairly simple
structurally be the solution. The
composition. Yet that I like about
modern human beings, as opposed to a however so a wedding between the
musical
concepts.” Got that, folks? Let’s skip forward a bit then, to: “more
rigid musical guidelines seemed to preserved as well everything is for
improvisation, to let a performer’s song”.
I took all this, and the fragments of non-traditional-looking
scores
reproduced with the notes to mean that Chang has worked out his own
method of
notating; directing compositions that are partly or wholly improvised
in
content. Maybe a deconstructionist kind
of thing. All this is at the service of
the ‘Picture Show’ which consists of eleven ‘scenes’ (read:’tracks’),
separated
into two ‘Acts’ (read:’different musical groupings’).
These scenes have titles like ‘Overture in which the
cast of characters
reveal themselves to be plumbers and bankers in pursuit of cops and
robbers’. Well, let’s see; what else? Oh right: the music. As
it happens, it sounds great. Perhaps
there’s no small debt to John Zorn’s
game strategy compositions, but even if that does happen to be Chang’s
jumping
of point, he jumps pretty far out, into a maniacally agile form of
group
interplay. The first ‘act’ consists of
Chang, Gross, Nuss, Radding, Lubelski, McDonough and Cook, mostly in
quartet
and trio configurations, all with Chang.
Unlike Zorn generally, Chang’s ensemble composition stays away
from
obvious cultural/idiomatic references, except for those of jazz and/or
free
music. These six tracks are followed by
an interlude where ‘we burn the scores
and play music like it was meant to be’, a completely
improvised-sounding
trio with pianist Elaine Kaplinsky and percussionist Christine Bard
(erstwhile
expert in the music of P.W. Schreck).
This all is followed by the second ‘act’ (Chang, Bard,
Kaplinsky, Siwula
and Radding), which is rather different from the first in character. Different players, a less fierce guitar tone
from Chang, though his playing retains its articulate, rapid parallel
motion
into explosive quality; kind of Marc Ribot meets Billy Jenkins. Looser in construction and not as tight in
its rhythmic organization, Act 2 comes off less successfully to me than
Act 1,
though it features some hyper-discorporate scat singing from Mr. Chang
on ‘Reverend Dippy tries to sermonize while,
unbeknownst to his herd, Satan tries to tempt him with images of fast
food and
slow women (with metal brassieres)’.
Yes, well…huh? In a literal sense
‘Picture Show is a remarkably novel approach to guitar ensemble music,
replete
with quasi-fictitious or allegorical commentary, terse and compelling
group
playing and, in Act 1, a kind of guitar concerto of the most splendid
dimensions and the most crafted attention to details. – Davey Williams.
The Improvisor, Mar 1996.
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PICTURE
SHOW - & now, it's back to wot we're all HERE for! GENUINE
improvisational
ARTISTRY! First got to meet Ed at an edition (June 1995) of his
"Unsound
Practices" series (down in Portland)... it was clear from that meeting
that he KNOWS what this improv "thang" is all about! Well, th' CD
shows that he knows how to PLAY it, too - from th' HEART! R-a-w jazz
energy,
caught in freeform, & pasted up fer' yer' earz ter' RELISH! There's
a
MONSTER in this CD, & it's ED! Those who are in love (aren't we
all?) with
th' freedom that improvisation can and does bring (not only in music,
but in
LIFESTYLE), will fall in LOVE with Chang's music on th' FIRST cut! A
genuine
blend of performance styles, & all th' players COMPLETELY together!
As
those of you who play in this freeform mode know, it often takes YEARS
to get
to this stage... too many times there's a sorta' "competition" that
gnaws away at th' overall, & even though th' stated goal is
"freedom" in th' playing, it begins (usually on each piece) to turn
in to some kind of "grabitnow drill". None o' that here! This is THE
best improv music I've heard in a YEAR! Certainly gets my vote as the
PICK of
'96 for "best improv". If you've never heard free-form before, THIS
is the music to GET! This is a GREAT musical experience that will be a
KEEPER
for MANY years to come!
Improvijazzation
Nation, issue # 25 Rotcod Zzaj
http://home.comcast.net/~rotcod/z25.htm
Picture
Show
I mean good
improv music is hard enough to play, but to make sure that the other
musicians
are playing in the right place, well, that’s a major task.
On “Picture Show”,
guitarist/composer/conductor/vocalist Ed Chang demonstrates that he’s
not only
up to the task but can make an amazing contribution to any
discriminating avante-garde
buff’s CD collection. In “Scene 19”, Ed
sputters some really amazing vocal lines, and in the process, seriously
won me
over to his “organized-noiz” school-o-thought.
Act I is mind-blowing, and Rich Gross’ performance on alto-sax
is of
special note. Christine Bard, of God Is
My Copilot, plays a mean percussion in Act II which also features
Reuben
Radding on bass. I bet this CD took a
bunch of people “off-garde”.
(Sonar Map 3, S.
Mediaclast)
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Picture Show
Recorded
in
NY, new comer Ed Chang brings us a made-up soundtracks to nothing,
complete
with bullshit scene descriptions. This
is like Sun Ra’s more minimalist work.
Sparse and purposeful.
KFJC New Album Review
5/10/95