from Michael Stearns - Lyra Sound Constellation (1983)

After releasing one of the most impressive works of electronica of the 1980's (Planetary Unfolding), instead of riding that wave, it would appear that Michael Stearns felt he had to find another peak to climb, as on this next album he sought instead to channel his inner Harry Bertoia and sound-sculpture his way towards Dark Ambient, using a massive, literally 'fills up the room', string apparatus ("156 wires stretched 15 to 20 feet from floor to ceiling (...) tuned to a micro-tonal interval (...) and connected to crystal and magnetic pickups", according to the liner notes) built by George Landry and dubbed "Lyra". 

That wasn't a bad idea, and there was some potential here to explore a unique soundworld, but I do feel that the music tends to rely too much on a sort of installation effect, expecting you to be instantly and persistently impressed by the sheer physical scale of the Lyra; except, without actually being in its presence, the sounds, by themselves, albeit suggestive, tend to just sit there, suspended in close quarters, with nowhere to go - an impression that is essentially reinforced by the fact that, almost as if in self-doubt, Stearns opted to append a final standout track (significantly titled "Return") harking back to his electronic ways, and whose slow-building and evolving dynamism ends up underlining the limitations of what he managed to coax out of the Lyra. 

Taken as an take on Satie's notion of musique d'ameublement (or "furniture music"), this can still be of value (particularly if the furniture in question is my bed, and I'm in it, waiting for slumber), and I would gladly have experienced it in situ, at some art center able to accommodate the whole shebang; but immaterialized on record, it simply doesn't seem to play to Stearns' strengths. 

I guess working a giant cobweb just isn't anyone's medium.

from Uri Caine Ensemble - The Othello Syndrome (2008)

Under a certain post-modern light, it's ironic to think how unfaithful this eclectic adaptation of themes from Verdi's operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello can be. One could even conceive of the making of the record itself as a meta-setting for a reboot of the play (a perfect task for Pirandello reborn), except in this version it would hardly be necessary for any Iago to budge a single scheming finger, as instead we would have Verdi at Caine's throat right from the start for all his actual horsing around with his muse. 

For people who have spent some time listening to Italian prog (that vast legion), the record can also be of some interest for (quite unwittingly, no doubt) driving home the point of how much the genre (though not the necessarily its most interesting practitioners) culled from the operatic tradition of the country; and that's actually where things get at least occasionally entertaining here - when Caine really shows his chops, playing with compositional dynamics.

Unfortunately, that is only a small portion of it, because the whole thing is indeed another one of Caine's shots at delivering some sort of musical gesamtkunstwerk, from a period when his ambition got the best of him, making him think he could do just about anything - in this case, meshing not only opera and jazz, but also pop, hip-hop, Broadway musicals, and a dozen other things at which I'm sure he thought he was equally adept - but I'm not convinced. 

So then, as the proceedings reach their end, amidst all the wasted characters and confetti shrapnel strewn across the floors, what might still be rescued from this over the top crossover kitsch-fest? Why, the disheveled "Drinking Song", of course: not only does it do a good job of representing those 5 minutes in the long process of getting drunk that actually get to be fun (after the build-up and before the downward spiral), but also, in the spirit in which that type of song was intended, it can be imbibed with the hope that, come the morning after, all our memories of the rest of this shindig (and of all the world has come to, if you're in that mood), will only be a blur.