Red Rose for the Sinking Ship
Info
Triple Bath | TRB 009
Released November 9, 2007
Edition of 96 copies. 30 extra printed in 2008.
Now available from Triple Bath on demand.51:35 total running time Credits Arranged and performed variously in fragmentary forms January – June 2007 Photos by Ana Karen Suárez Graphic by Themis Pantelopoulos, October 2007 Notes The title was originally conceived as a great play on several words and names and this offers a clue to how to read the work and to how it is composed through a hermeneutic process. “Red”, being the color associated with Communism, became a kind of guiding color-feeling and character throughout the process and, combined with “rows” (as in “rose” ) , acquired another supplementary aspect of mystical perfume. The relation-ship to Mao as the violation of a people’s movement and my feelings for Cardew aside, I grew up with a rather against the American grain sentimental attachment to the political Left which has wounded me into youngish old age. Red rose for the sinking ship is rather a complicated dream, as seems much of actual history and, certainly , one’s personal feeling for history seems all the more so. The facts don’t mean as much when you have hopes, dreams and desires. The facts actually are constructed by too many deciding, unreal, ungraspable and megalithic powers, so one finds even the “facts” suspicious. Whose facts? The dream is actually simpler: a desperate person on a sinking ship sees another sinking ship and paddles with his own hands over to rescue others or be taken aship by those who he finds. He finds no one in the end. He doesn’t drown. He just continues dreaming.
Reviews A visionary ability in the assemblage of concrete and electronic sources can take you a long way, the constrictions of low budgets notwithstanding. Greek label Triple Bath, run by Themis Pantelopoulos, published only 96 copies of Red Rose For The Sinking Ship by Jeff Gburek, a 45-year old guitarist and composer who uses extended guitar techniques, signal processing, open source applications and field recordings to engender a unique electroacoustic brand. The man collaborates with Michael Vorfeld and Michael Walz in the ZYGOMA trio, has played with the likes of Keith Rowe, Tetuzi Akiyama, Kyle Bruckmann and – in 2006 – was a student of Helmut Lachenmann in Darmstadt. Recent releases appeared on A Question Of Re_Entry (the excellent Virtuous Circles), Con-V and on the Mattin website. Additional info about earlier works can be found via an attentive search through this very website (Bagatellen). The album’s title is impenetrably arcane, considering that “…Red is a kind of sympathetic individual who loves people” and that “rose” is pronounced as, and exchangeable with, “rows”. In Gburek’s words, “…the sinking ship will leave behind survivors, more appreciative of simple human care”. The overall plot emphasizes “revolutionary nostalgia” and “the naivety of utopianism”, as this five-part composition should be considered a sonic essay about the figure of Mao Zhedong. Quite sincerely, I couldn’t think of a farther connection after having heard the music, dynamically variable and often very intense, the representation of a physiochemical complex rather than a reminder of revolution. Each setting is fairly incomparable, featuring a comprehensive gamut of protuberances and radiations – mildly synthetic to shortwave to ear-biting noise. The originator depicts his fantasies through processed carillons, modified guitars, birdsongs and – utterly baffling for this writer – tapings of ongoing activities at the main railway station in Milan, the incessant hubbub interspersed with computerized announcements of delayed arrivals and upcoming departures appearing like illusions in a haze of humming presences and altered ambiences. Beyond the studio treatment, there is substance in this music’s backbone: Gburek is seriously endowed with architectural talent, allowing the single scenes to maintain a logic of “anomalous occurrence” while functioning coherently as a whole. Their consecutiveness is almost visible, the changes expected yet disconcerting, the listener embraced by a pale-skinned gratification throughout, until a softly unsettling finale (which will be left unrevealed). A work that grows with every listen, definitely recommended. Massimo Ricci | Bagatellen | July 10, 2008 Guitarist Jeff Gburek says the title Red Rose For The Sinking Ship takes arcane essence. It’s a sonic essay about Mao Zedong’s leadership of the Chinese revolution.Instrumental as it is, these are things that has to be told to you because strictly from the sounds presented here, partly from guitars as well as various electro-acoustic constructions. Cryptic, both in title and sound. Even with an explanation that says: “Red is a kind of a sympathetic individual who loves people. in his own boat he sees the sinking ship. isolated and lonely, he thinks-even on a sinking ship-he may find what he needs. the sinking ship will leave behind survivors, more appreciative of simple human care.” Words that should add a spectral meaning to the equally spectral music. The cdr is packaged with a sheet with pictures as further suggestions. The first movement, for instance, has us floating around in a guitarwanderings, quitely. Ticks and hisses are spatiously ordered but turn out to be a quiet before the storm. The second movement (or ‘Threshold’) is a lot less comfortable, as a fierce noise comes piercing through. In the following threshold guitarstrings, a musical box and bubbling ticks takes into more open skies until ghostly voices in what seems a restaurant take us back into more inhabited spaces, even to what could be a fieldrecordings from a trainstation. A mellow radiostatic follows in Threshold 4, calmly but steadily creating an atmosphere where subtle ambient chords mysteriously hover over the fluctuating static until less friendly feedback (or bowed metal) concludes the fourth part on a less comfortable note. A delicate musical box returns to search for what could be a (national?) anthem in the final threshold. The five parts of Red Rose For A Sinking Ship are varied and adventurous. Even though Gburek has layed out his view on what these sounds convey it’s still very much up to the listener to create his own story and picture. Luckily, the sounds are pretty and interesting enough to make that an easy task. Martijn Busink | Musique Machine | June 2008 Only a few weeks ago, in Vital Weekly 600, I reviewed Virtuous Circles by Jeff Gburek on A Question Of Re-Entry, which I thought was a great work of field recordings. Here he returns from his home in Berlin with another release on a Greek label and Red Rose For The Sinking Ship informally constitutes a sonic essay about Mao Zedong’s leadership of the Chinese Revolution, for fifty years until his death’. How that works exactly is not told, as Gburek loves a bit of mysticism. Triple Bath delivered some more notes about Gburek and we learn that he plays the guitar and self-constructed electronic environment to process the guitar playing. He has played with many improvisers from the field of electronic and improvised music area. This new work deals with the guitar and not with field recordings. Divided in five parts, this is however one piece. In the beginning the guitar sounds like a guitar, moving delicately through various forms of electronic processing, without losing the idea of a real guitar. It ends in the very last minute by sounding like a music box and in between it has taken many shapes: loud click noise music, soft sections and in much of that the guitar is not recognized as such. Not at all. It’s again a pretty fascinating journey that he takes the listener on, moving through various textures, moods and atmospheres. Despite some of the harsher textures here and there more microsound than one would expect. A great release, again, one that will reveal some of its beauty only after a repeated playing. Frans de Waard | Vital Weekly | Issue 609 | January 8, 2008
