Björn Nilsson is dedication and pure force, determination and razor edge taste. He’s one of those very few who make things happen against all (financial) odds. His label Content issues a select choice of modern art music records, and there is always something worthwhile, if not even stunning, about Content’s records.

This is one of his earlier releases, hitting the few stores that would carry it, back in 1997. However, timelessness is a key word in Björn Nilsson’s phonogram production, so the year of release is of pure academic interest.

Alvin Lucier is another seemingly bizarre individual in the field of art music. Many of his recordings are experiments in sound that may also carry across into the field of music or at least sound art. I Am Sitting In A Room is an experiment with room reverberation. Lucier records a short description of what he is doing, namely recording what he is saying, over and over again, at first directly onto a reel-to-reel tape, and then he plays back this recording in the room, recording the sound from the first recording onto another tape. The resulting tape of that is in turn played back, recorded through the air onto yet another tape, and so forth. This way Lucier collects the increasing reverberation, which in the end is the only thing that remains, with the vocal message hidden deep inside this massive reverberation, revealing itself only through certain rhythmic patterns of the sound.

This is a truly classic recording. I first heard I Am Sitting In A Room on a CD from Lovely Music that released a recording of it from 1980, made in Lucier’s home in Connecticut. Lucier first recorded the piece in the electronic music studio of Brandeis University in the fall of 1969. The version heard here, which became the definite concert version for a decade, was recorded in 1970 in a rented apartment in Middletown, Connecticut.

The text reads:

The last sentence refers to Lucier’s intermittent stuttering.

The second piece on the CD is CXLI Greetings to La Monte Young, performed by Lars Hagström on piano and Björn Nilsson on percussion. From the beginning it was intended as a version of La Monte Young’s arabic numeral, but apparently Nilsson found out later that this way of performing arabic numeral did not adhere to La Monte Young’s instructions in such a way that it could be called a version of said work. Consequently, Björn Nilsson – for these technical (or legal?) reasons - had to rename the piece an install himself as the composer, even though he still feels that the piece is La Monte Young’s.

Browsing my collections I find a recording of arabic numeral for vase and piano, performed by Björn Nilsson and Lars Hagström. I’m not sure when this was recorded, but I recorded it from radio on 27th June 1995. The recording on this CD was made 1st June 1997 in Målsryd, Sweden. I also found – scrutinizing my shelves – a recording with La Monte Young called Arabic Numeral (any integer) for Henry Flynt. This CD arrived here from an undisclosed source in Italy, and is a CDR of a tape with hiss almost as loud as La Monte Young’s catatonic banging on the keyboard of the piano… Nilsson’s and Hagström’s 1997 recording on this Content CD is by far the most rewarding to listen through, and the most beautiful, at that. It’s 17 minutes long, and this is more than enough to put the listener into an introspective, meditative, if not hypnotic, state.

The piano and the percussion are struck with an interval of about 8 seconds, and simultaneously, so that you can’t make out which is percussion and which is piano, except from the resounding overtones. Maybe the attack says something, also, about the origin – but as I listen I’m not looking for this. I’m just listening as if this was one single instrument – and the mix of overtones in here is exceedingly beautiful. The tone attacks, then recedes, then attacks, then recedes – as a slow and mighty church bell. The sound is more velvet, though, than the color of the tolling of a church bell; more spiritual (sic!) than a church bell can ever be, since a church bell – from my point of view, perhaps destroyed by too many bread priests, as they say in Finland) deals with the formal aspect of the liturgy, whereas Nilsson’s and Hagström’s resounding beats open up real spiritual realms, the way shamans or great Buddhist teachers do (or Björk!), whisking away the cloud-cover that obscures Rigpa, the true state of Consciousness. I feel I can use this piece called CXLI Greetings to La Monte Young for meditative purposes, reaching farther into the reality of myself and everything else (which really is the same thing!).
Of course, anyone with open ears can listen just for the beautiful glimmer of overtones and the steady, slow beat. That lasts far!

The last work is Zoltán Jeney’s KATO NK 300; July 22, 1979, 10.30 a.m. – Liptó Street, Budapest.

Well, that’s almost a La Monte Young title, huh? The composer plays the organ of Fristad’s Church in Sweden on 23rd March 1997.

The CD booklet has interesting inform about Jeney and his work. One is that the piece played here has only been performed in its entirety a couple of times. The first time this happened was at a concert in Borås, Sweden; Björn Nilsson’s hometown. Jeney explained afterwards what made him keep playing:

“I decided to stop at the first sound from the audience, after the compulsory part, but there was no sound, so I had to play it. I’m glad I did.”

This calls for an explanation. The title, first of all, is derived from the time when the composer got the idea for the work. He sat at his desk, working, when, through his window, he heard two repeated, signaling sounds from a construction site nearby. He went out to find out exactly what these sounds were, and found a crane, a KATO NK 300. The sounds were warning signals, when the crane turned. There two sounds had the pitches a and b. Jeney lingered a while, but couldn’t see the logic of the sounds. He noticed that none of the signals were repeated more than six times in a row.

From this experience he composed his piece, solely from pitches a and b. The tones appear from one to six times before the other tone kicks in, and so forth. The number of times the tones sound each time is determined by chance operations. The beats appear at a steady 72 beats per minute. The indications say that any instrument that can sustain a pitch at a constant volume level can be used. Here it is an organ. The composer decided on a complete duration of about 25:40. On the recording he sticks to that, at 25:46 including short silences at the start and the end.
The composer talked about a mandatory part. This takes about six minutes to play. After that it is up to the performer to decide when to stop, if he doesn’t want to play the whole piece.

Listening to this monotonous progression of almost identical tones in various numbers of pitches a and b actually makes for an intriguing duration of attention. After a while you get spellbound by these insisting, stubborn organ keys that follow one after the other without ever blending or forming chords. It’s a lonely walk along the sidewalk, in the gutter and up again and down and up. It’s a bit like an old man’s go at playing hopscotch.

This work is much more naked, bare – much more of a skeleton – but it reminds me a little of a work called Forging, composed by Steve Ingham, which I have on a recording from The Oscar Church in Stockholm, played by Hans-Ola Ericsson in 1986. Those works have certain aspects in common; a stubborn utilization of few means, from which they – by way of the listener’s perception – create a much more complex experience than you’d think possible. In Zoltán Jeney’s case it is achieved by varying the number of times each of the two notes are played before the other note takes its turn. Since this is decided by chance operations, there is no apparent logic structure, but the mind of the listener still hears a structure, made up instantly while listening. This is probably part of the reason why this works so well.

I’ve been investigating similar ways of letting chance decide a tonal pattern, but with many more tones. I’ve done this in many ways, with recorders and saucepan lids and wine glasses, but the most exciting results – which will be revealed, I hope, in a coming CD – have been achieved by using my own voice, uttering different single words in various pitches, and then letting the words go round and around in long loops, up to in excess of 40 channels. The trick is to give the loops various, chance decided durations, which means that the combinations will always change.
To some extent, this is what Zoltán Jeney has done here, with just these two notes. I tell you, if you start to listen, your addicted!