This is a very mixed bag indeed, which is all fort the better, making for an exciting hour of listening, with not a boring minute inserted anywhere! You’re immediately thrown into a lively street scene with a singing hobo – maybe – or some other rough voiced middle-aged man. A piano sets in as the guy talks about beer and cigarettes, and “oh shit, here comes the cops”… definitely a naturalistic auditive walk down a downtown street! Reminds me, slightly, of some of the stuff that Moondog did on his New York street corner, except this is 2001, and the computerized electronics spice the environment up with swooping plains and illusionary breaks… That was “Slow Motion Perp Walk”, track 1 on this Accretions CD.

Next you’re up in the Scottish Highlands, by way of “Scotland the Brave” on bagpipes, until your violently uprooted and landed in some freeform jazz situation on east or west coast U.S.A. It’s a wild event, resembling some of the smokier sessions with John Coltrane and Archie Shepp in 1967 at Birdland. The track is named “Free Throw Prophet”. Some Ligeti organ chords make way for crazed vocals mixed with some groaning golden horns, yeah man! All this is happening in the middle of what sounds like some kind of ball game, and in fact, in the booklet are stated the names of the participants in the basket ball game… holy medallion…!

“Gadfly Principle” is the next track, with just a prepared piano, played by Hans Fjellestad. It sounds at first like an Indian santoor, though, as played by Shivkumar Sharma, or a Finnish Kantele straight out of the myths of ancient Kalevala – but the explanation is that Fjellestad plays directly on the strings, of course. Pretty soon this turns into wildly twisted regular piano playing, however retaining some influences from John Cage’s pieces for prepared toy pianos and Conlon Nancarrow’s “Studies for Player Piano”, as well as some aspects of Ross Bolleter’s worn down, aged Australian outback bar piano… Great stuff! You name it – we like it!

“Pulp451” sounds like some Stockhausenesque overtone exercise, as in “Stimmung” or “Sternklang”, and when, in the midst of the vocal permutations a Danish voice appears saying something like “She’s the kind of girl, she’s the kind of girl – you can see it, you know it – that you can’t get”… But – is that out of “Saxo Grammaticus”, like the booklet says? Huh? This even sounds like some of the deep throat stuff that sound poet Henri Chopin produces, and as I am one of the sternest advocators of sound poetry, this is probably my favorite on this very varied album. The electronics are very spatial, moving about like a band of trigger-happy mosquitoes in some early piece by Bernard Parmegiani of Groupe de Recherches Musicales! The female vocals are fascinating, like the outrageous mouthings of Hebriana Alainentalo; mystic of Swedish Lapland.


The two tracks for piano duo called “Zoonomia” are restful experiences that you badly need after the above-mentioned events… This is to flow out into, down the middle of the flow, in a slow floating feeling under the clouds, as your youth passes by… like the Dean of the Bananas University having a lazy afternoon by the grand piano, meditating on some illicit actions he engaged in way back when…
The second of the two pieces with the same name is more complicated, as if the business-man-suite-keyboardings of the former variation was about to break down into some raw facts of Dallas, Texas life, where it’s pure hell to get out onto Central Expressway when you’re on your way home to Melody Park Apartments on Melody Lane, where the landlord really knows how to keep them cock roaches at bay, and you redress to attend the Sunday meeting at the Kingdom Hall.

“Uncouth Vermouth”, again – track 7 – brings on saxophone whines that could almost pale – or at least match – the stuff on the vinyl “So – Und? So!” from guru Berliner Wolfgang Fuchs! Hit it!

Concluding track sounds pianistically like some of Ligeti’s “Etudes”, or maybe even some of the “Sonates pour piano” by Pierre Boulez, played by Herbert Henck – but here it’s a composition by Hans Fjellestad played by the very same Mr. Man! This is “Three Sockets”, and it finishes up this highly interesting and enjoyable CD in high style. Thanks, guys!