Search - Eyvind Kang & Tucker Martine :: Orchestra Dim Bridges

My first great listening experience of the new year

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 01/07/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Eyvind Kang and Tucker Martine have known each other for quite a while. In light of the spectacular music they make on this remarkable disc, the only question is this: Why did it take them so long to record together?



Kang, long a member of Bill Frisell's quartet, has a unique approach to his primary instrument, the violin. Not only does he get an astounding variety of sounds from it, he also has a knack for playing it in a faux-naive way that humanizes its sometimes harsh timbre and imbues it with a warmth and eerie beauty uniquely his. With a handful of outrageous solo discs to his credit, including such weirdness as The Sweetness of Sickness and Theater of Mineral NADEs, he has carved out a niche in contemporary improvised music completely his own.



Tucker Martine, long associated with Wayne Horvitz (see esp. their latest, Mylab), but also the production genius behind artists like Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, Laura Veirs, Down Pilot, and Sanford Arms, as well as heading up the sound collage project Mount Analog, is fast becoming one of the most in-demand sound-sculptors working in the biz today.



Together they've created one of the most beguiling, intriguing, and just plain weird discs out there. Ranging in styles as diverse as demented pop to outré electronica--and nearly everything in between--Orchestra Dim Bridges presents a constantly shifting soundscape of staggering diversity. Yet, strangely, several unifying threads unite these disparate materials: the lads' propensity for purely gorgeous melodies, a wacky world-percussive sensibility, dreamy, ocean floor/blasted heath moods, and the seamless assimilation and appropriation of the wildest assortment of world musics conceivable.



Anyone taken with some of Frisell's latest projects, Mylab, Dhafer Youssef, Critters Buggin, and Garage a Trois should waste no time in picking this up. Others with big ears will also want to give a listen.



Highest recommendation."