Toronto improviser (saxophone, clarinet, guitar, double bass) Karen Ng has accustomed us to all sorts of spontaneous exuberances over the past years. But in a purely acoustic format. With Backwards Blue, she reinvents herself by adding electronics to her universe. Listening to the album, one wouldn’t have believed it was the first time. Ms. Ng has a good command of the language of electro-acoustic fusion.
Improbable Colors
The music on Backwards Blue is evanescent, built on ineffable symbolism and beautifully expressed, I would say, by the titles of the pieces, chosen by the artist to associate various intangible adjectives with all sorts of colours. What might an Inflatable Grey, a Tactile Black, a Flimsy Pink or a Backwards Blue look like? Even better: how might they sound?
Vital Intuitions
Some intuitions come to life in an expected way, like this Impact Purple that strikes the ears with multiple sound grains shot by Ng, her saxophone, and the synths. Or Brittle Brown, which seems to atomise as the listening progresses, Tactile Black mentioned earlier, which seeks to embody itself almost carnally, Flimsey Pink in the process of fading, or Hollow Gold expressed by an ultra-muted electro drone and ending, surprise, with an acoustic guitar refrain with folk accents! At the bottom of the cavity, there was a nugget!
Others show their condition less clearly and end up escaping our attention.
Surrealist palette
Karen Ng uses the entire expanded range of musical playing to express her surreal ideas: extended techniques, atonal sound squeaks, and sometimes even a bit of almost Coltrane-like lyricism. Not forgetting the use of synthetic lutherie artifices that aptly dress the extravagances of the composer-performer.
Backwards Blue is a fascinating album, if only for the improbable images it suggests and seeks to translate into astonishing sounds.
