Waclaw Zimpel was one of the coolest guests at this 26th MUTEK. A trained clarinetist, primarily playing the bass clarinet, he twice made my top 10 list of best sets. Let’s start with Wednesday’s set as part of the Nocturne 1 program at the SAT. The Polish musician’s connection with English producer James Holden is rich, and I was lucky to be able to make it through the night from Wednesday to Thursday for this superb performance. These guys are in their forties and have acquired a remarkable maturity, their careers having been marked by openness and sophistication.
A solid bass clarinet technician, particularly skilled in multiphonic techniques and using a vocabulary inspired by contemporary jazz, Zimpel doesn’t focus his discourse on the melodic articulation of his favorite instrument (so we can’t assess his virtuosity in this regard), but rather on a melodically minimalist, linear discourse focused more on a textural approach to music. With these values shared with James Hoden, and with Holden, also capable of reinventing his style known since his debut in the public arena (IDM, trance, minimal techno), Waclaw Zimpel fuels a unique dialogue. Recorded in tandem, the excellent opus The Universe Will Take Care of You gave us a taste of this nighttime set for diehards, surprisingly numerous in the middle of the week.
On site, we observe that Zimpel has installed filters for his acoustic instrument, which modifies its natural sound. In addition, he activates several other elements of his electronic devices while James Holden generates the rhythmic framework of the conversation and enunciates the repeated and shifted melodic-harmonic patterns in the manner of American minimalism, and whose synthesized notes are often fleshed out by the unison or counterpoint of the clarinet. Unlike the album released last June, the Holden/Zimpel live set reveals necessarily new improvisations that flesh out more robust compositional structures, accompanied by roughness, in short a different relief than what the recent recording of their tandem offers. We can here speak of varied extrapolations of the initial work, since this night concert was in no way intended to be a faithful reproduction of the recording that preceded it. Very appreciated indeed.
