Label: Blank Forms Editions

ラ・モンテ、ラディーグ、ルシエ等々、大御所勢の演奏に於いて毎度最高峰のパフォーマンスを聞かせてくれるアメリカのチェロ奏者であるCharles Curtis、ミニマル・ミュージック研究家としても知られるアラン・リクト、ニュージーランドのマルチインストゥルメンタリストDean Roberts、この三者が1999年春に行ったヨーロッパ11ヶ所を巡るツアー。コンサートを行なっている間は正弦波持続音を鳴らし続け、それに合わせて即興演奏を実行するという単純ながらも非常にカッコ良いコンセプトの録音。90 年代後半に流行したミニマル+ロックの流れ、また参加メンバーらの他プロジェクトの活動を好む方には必ず刺さる一枚。美しいシルクスクリーン・ジャケット。





Black vinyl pressed by New Orleans Record Press, with silkscreen tip-on jacket by Alan Sherry and insert by Ofset Yapimevi.

In the spring of 1999, Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts brought an unconventional mix of drone, improvisation, and experimental rock on an eleven-stop tour of Europe. The concept was straightforward, yet novel: each night, they would improvise a single piece while sustained sine waves played for the duration of the concert. May 99, culled from three shorter pieces recorded for a radio program at Amsterdam’s VPRO near the end of the tour, represents an early high watermark in the collision of minimal and rock sensibilities that started to become prevalent in the late 90s and is an ear-opening listen even for those familiar with the musicians’ other projects.

May 99 combines resonant sine waves in the style of eminent downtown New York composer La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music with scratchings, scrapings, and warblings produced by Licht and Roberts’s guitars, Curtis’s cello, and a variety of electronics. Just as sine waves hold together these sundry improvisations, a shared tendency toward the minimalistic—Licht’s performances with the Blue Humans, collaborations with Loren Connors, and solo guitar records; Roberts in the band Thela and his solo project White Winged Moth; and Curtis performing with Young and his own Trio—brought together three musicians with very different backgrounds, creating fertile ground on which they generated the album’s unclassifiable sounds.