The eight musicians of the Austrian ensemble Louie’s Cage Percussion regularly play with major orchestras in Vienna or Graz and are all virtuosos of the baton and mallet. The pieces presented here, which form a concert programme, are by two of the members of the ensemble: Sebastian Brugner-Luiz (2) and Florian Klinger (3); the latter has also arranged a work by Debussy. A third member of the group, Lucas Salaun, offers an arrangement of the overture to Verdi’s La forza del destino. A strange title, “Pure”, for a programme that aims precisely to demonstrate the full range of sound textures that the extreme variety of percussion instruments contains. If we also use a malletKAT (midi xylophone), a Keytar (a keyboard midi controller that is held like a guitar) and a few instruments invented for the occasion, let’s say that the palette of available sounds is almost infinite. This is especially the case in the opening piece, Radio Island, where we could be dealing with a jazz combo, with piano, electric guitar and bass (instruments that are nevertheless absent). The piece is also full of spoken voice samples, some of which are taken from Orson Welles’ superb interpretation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in 1938. The piece Alphabetic Klimt is also rooted in jazz, its composer, Florian Klinger, being also known as an excellent jazz vibraphonist. An excerpt of the piece can be seen here:
The program, however, remains largely based on xylophone, vibraphone and other glockenspiels. It is also a bit of a shame that it was not considered useful to give us the details of the instrumentarium used in each of the pieces (although the notes still vaguely refer to it). The musicians also use their voices, in chorus, to support certain melodies. Wishing to show that they come from the “classical” universe, the musicians offer us a Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun to which the percussions do surprisingly justice, the ethereal side of Debussy’s symphonic poem accommodating itself quite well to the marimba attacks. Verdi’s work, meanwhile, is subjected to a disco beat attack that could be a nod to Beethoven’s Fifth arranged by Walter Murphy in 1976. With, in addition, the “cheap” synthesizer sound chosen for the bass part, let’s say that it’s not the best piece on the album. Apart from this last title, it remains overall a varied and stimulating program.
