Essentially a composer with involvement in a multidude of projects right across the performing arts spectrum, this is Tristan Shorr’s debut release as hypothetical alter-ego GIDEON WOLF.
And it’s Schorr’s across-the-board involvement that ultimately gets him off the hook for this murky, barely structured incidental mock-ambience. Hollow loops and quasi-religious incantations reign supreme throughout a record that, as purely a music release is devoid of all necessary context.
Think of the emotional weight or heightened drama that Schorr’s compositions would give to a film, a play, and all my conventional reservations simply vanish.
Schorr/WOLF is so uncompromisingly anti-conventional in his approach to composition that it’s difficult not to feel immediately alienated – in that sense, it’s no different from a lot of modern art. Is this genius in the making, or can he see us coming?
The physical release (in very elaborately packaged, glass mastered CD form, no less) seems to support the music’s failure to stand alone. A selection of prints thrown in alongside a plethora of other bits and bobs. Fluid Audio have strictly limited this to just 200 copies. What’s more they’re SCENTED.
This of course shifts our focus slightly away from the audio. What the fuck do they smell like? – my limited powers of imagination stop at visions of singles boxes full of 70’s disco 45’s splashed with the synonymous smell of Brut or Hai Karate.
I suspect however that ‘Paper’, in keeping with its classical instrumentation and groundbreaking-at-all-costs ethos, will prove to be somewhat more subtle.
I’m definitely intrigued at this point, but only by the record’s possible aroma! Musically, it sounds far more intriguing than it actually is:
Created from within an improvisational framework, ‘Paper’ is based on a series of, erm, ‘improvised’ piano pieces. These are cunningly interspersed with additional, ‘live’ piano tracks that bizarrely, having been manipulated this way and that, are perhaps the biggest indicator of the extent to which Schorr, a bona-fide ‘off-the-cuff’ merchant, also places his creative faith in experimentation. If you don’t believe me, then check that ‘absolutely anything except drums’ approach to percussion. You’ll need to listen hard though, cos there’s not a single sodding beat.
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Much of this I’d have more than likely failed to pick up on without Schorr’s extensive and detailed explanations, but nevertheless..
There are seven tracks in all, if you count the ‘secret’ REDUX remix of odd-track-out ‘Nine Hundred Miles’. As there aren’t any instrumentals at all on the record, as such (as vocals feature on every track), ‘Nine Hundred’ is still the only one that contains actual ‘lyrics’. These are literally no more than a sparsely used barely extended, once-repeated version of the title itself, buried deep in the mix.
To my conventionally shackled mind, this still doesn’t exactly ‘single’ it out as a favourite for future release (geddit). At well over nine-minutes long, the barely comprehensible vocals are just as incidental as their incomprehensible equivalents, and the rest of this hugely abstract record. If you seize upon the title as well as the duration and then do the maths, you’ll only end up disappointed.
In fairness, my jukebox-driven narrow-mindedness, bpm-based methods of evaluation and ridiculously short attention span highlight the two-way nature of the criticical process, but the fact remains that this makes little sense as an album, as an audio-only release.
Perhaps this illustrates the potential chasm between my capacity for understanding and appreciation of neo-classical music and the actual merits of the record.
But I think you’d find the same faults – shortcomings really - that only exist due a complete lack of context. As a music-only release, ‘Paper’, incomplete rather than unfinished, fails to properly utilise Schorr’s obvious range of talents.
Crucially, it also fails to properly address where this man’s true aspirations lie.
Smell that, pop fans!
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