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ESP 4061 Eli Keszler - Oxtirn | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Also Available: Oxtirn Limited 2CD Edition Includes Unreleased REL Recording of Oxtirn Live Updated May 2011
ESP-Disk' has released some far-out albums in its 47 years, but Eli Keszler’s Oxtirn raises the bar. Keszler is a percussionist and composer like no other; some connoisseurs of outside music will know him from his work with the singular guitarist Jandek.Oxtirn is Keszler’s ESP-Disk' debut and most widely distributed album after prolifically self-releasing micro-edition CDRs, tapes, and vinyl via his label REL Records.
On Oxtirn, Keszler plays drums, guitar, piano, prepared piano, motors, cymbal, crotales (bowed and unbowed), snare drum, prepared/riveted sheet metal, spring harp, bass board, and microphones. He’s joined by clarinetist Ashley Paul (his partner in Aster) on two tracks, plus Andrew Fenlon (trumpet, tuba, French horn, trombone) and Sakkiko Mori (prepared piano) on one track each.
There are few musical analogies to what Keszler is doing here. It might sound like freely improvised noise, but it’s actually meticulously composed – and if you don’t believe it, you can check out his graphical-notation score for all three tracks, included on a six-panel fold-out. The Italian Futurists of the 1920s would have loved this magnificent din, so full of startling timbres and arresting textural combinations, like a cross between Xenakis and free jazz.
The LP received rave reviews:
“a major work;
for once
i agree with the supplied hyperbole
- this really does transcend genre, equally incorporating theareas-of-interest
that fuel eli’s quest; brutal
free jazz, scaled back
euro improv, the confined roar
of late 70’s
no-wave/art punk, and various aspects
of post-war compositional dictates
…”–Mimaroglu
Music Sales, which also named it one
of the top 20 releases of 2010
“Oxtirn is an excellent introduction to Keszler's work and, if Steven Stapleton ever updates his Nurse With Wound List, Keszler's name should be on it.”–Clifford Allen, Paris Transatlantic Magazine
ESP-Disk's initial limited LP release of Oxtirn sold out immediately, prompting the label to issue Eli’s masterwork for the first time on CD for global distribution. The beautifully packaged CD recreates the original album art executed and designed by Eli. Additions to the gatefold package include that six-panel foldout showing the intricately detailed musical score to Oxtirn; the other side features a new piece of original art dedicated to the CD reissue, one of Keszler’s beautiful abstract artworks. Musically, Oxtirn has never sounded better, as it was remastered for stunning high-quality digital sound. Oxtirn now includes not only the two tracks originally released on the vinyl but also the rarely heard third movement featuring Keszler plus Mori on prepared piano, making this CD the most complete-in-one-place edition of Oxtirn available.
Originally designed poster by Eli Keszler included in Oxtirn CD
Graphic score included in Oxtirn CD
Oxtirn is a truly unique and powerful blend of free energy, modern composition and mechanical music that defies genre. With two proper full lengths and an array of self-releases under his belt, Eli Keszler has turned to ESP-Disk for the release of Oxtirn, his third, most composed and large scale effort to date. Capturing Keszler and crew at their most frenetic, Oxtirn abruptly spills out into a cacophony of tuned brass, squeaking rust, and electrically shorting contact mics, taking the detritus of post-industrial existence (sheet metal, spring boards and motors wrenched from their initial hearths) and transforming that refuse into a twenty-first century musique-concrete orchestra. On the album’s initial track, motors tumble across prepared sheets of metal as expertly placed squalls of bowed string and what could only be described as the sounds of a phantom brass band (courtesy of multiple horn player Andrew Fenlon and Keszler’s longstanding partner Ashley Paul on clarinet) mesh transcendentally with Keszler’s precise percussion and bursts of controlled chaos. Side B sees Eli and sonic artist Sakiko Mori on both prepared and installed pianos; as the two furiously scrape and agitate strings with a mix of switch-operated motors, contact mics and suspended preparations, slowly undulating resonant clusters float on top of the underlying din, creating a striking contrast. Here, the eerie timbre of Keszler’s bowed crotales recall Italian futurist Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori and the string quartets of Dumitrescu.
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