Well, well well… Who springs up from these binary successions, if not old Harry – Harry Partch… or is it… Harry Bertoia… or… No, it’s Tom Nunn and his Octatonic T-Rodimba!

This is quite amazing! You could even mistake it for gamelan, but from where…? Not Bali, not Java – but San Francisco. A lot of creative stuff is going on in that part of the world. I remember myself walking those hills in 1971, recording the firecrackers of the Chinese New Year in Chinatown and the gulls down at Fisherman’s Wharf…

I’m in the middle of listening to this CD – “Burning Palms” track 7 – and I’m socializing with J. C. here, and his prepared stuff, like percussion but not… but this IS a percussive – or a plucked? - instrument. Maybe the fairest comparison would be an African Mbira.

It has become clear to me that Tom Nunn builds many instruments, and some of them can be viewed at his homepage. Don’t miss the chance to check them out – they’re intriguing contraptions!
The instrument that Tom Nunn plays here is the Octatonic T-Rodimba, which – I quote from the booklet – “is constructed from a 3/4 inch birch plywood sheet with 33 threaded steel rods bent at 90° angles attached to the board in groups of 11, forming three V shapes, with the largest rod at the bottom (center) and progressively shorter rods above […] In addition to the rods there are three ‘zing trees’ (bronze rods bent to form small tree-like shapes embedded in the board, making gong-like sounds when struck), a pair of strings connected with a small steel washer, a line of finishing nails with random pitches along the bottom edge, textured surfaces for scraping, a loose fitting bolt to make chirping sounds, and a couple of aluminum discs the size of a CD which are scraped or struck. The implements used include ‘stick mallets’ made of wood dowel for striking the rods, combs and knitting needles for scraping, guitar picks to pluck and strum the nails or scrape the rods, [and] a small bow for bowing the strings and rods.”

Wow! Impressive and imaginative. I come to think about my old friend Sune Karlsson in Stockholm, who used similar techniques – not quite as sophisticated – when he recorded his 12-hour composition “Phonia Domestica” (1988) from what he could find in his tiny apartment, among other things knitting needles stuck into cupboard doors! There seem to be more lovely insanities going on all over the globe. I’m glad!

The Octatonic T-Rodimba is amplified via two contact microphones on the back of the board. This method makes possible the distribution of minute, miniscule vibrations, otherwise lost a couple of centimeters from the surface. This method has been used by Karlheinz Stockhausen as well as John Cage.
This instrument is tuned in an octatonic scale of alternating major 2nd and minor 2nd intervals, resulting in a scale of eight notes instead of the usual seven.

Track 4 – “Fricticious Critters” – apply a lot of frictionals indeed, in an area usually inhabited by Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram on Edition Modern in Romania. Nunn also adds some electronics here, it seems (as if out of classical “Silver Apples of the Moon” by Morton Subotnick) – but I’m not sure these “electronics” aren't actually acoustical treatments in a suggestive electronic mimicry… Nonetheless, this track is particularly interesting and enjoyable, with its many overtones and colors of sound, percussive, plucked, scraped and mimicryed!

Maybe it’s not polite to make comparisons, but track 5 – “Nonsomnambulant Digression” – really lays it on us with a J. C. “Sonatas & Interludes” atmosphere. Maybe this is just natural when you have these fantastic instruments at your disposal; I mean, the instruments themselves could possibly lure a certain kind of expression out of you.

As improvised music this is something out of the ordinary, through the combination of the solo effort and the personal, invented and constructed instruments. Some of the most exciting sounds out of new music rise out of this CD. I can’t wait to hear more from this artist!