Kyle Bruckmann - On Procedural Grounds - Liner Notes.pdf

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“The past does not influence me; I influence it.” —Willem de Kooning
Music, a time-dependent art form, provides good accompaniment to evolutionary thoughts. If a
musical module or gestalt shows agency along with an imperative to promulgate itself (or its
“DNA”) throughout the life-cycle of a sonic ecosystem—attributes of an adapting organism—
then an evolving system of such modules, fighting, eating, and fornicating with each other for
survival, characterizes a great deal of Kyle Bruckmann’s work. An obsession with the dynamic
tension between stasis and sudden breakouts can be found over the course of his entire output.
The theory of punctuated equilibrium comes to mind. In this view of evolution, instead of a slow
and steady progress of changing life forms, long periods of “equilibrium” are “punctuated” by
sudden, drastic episodes where entire classes of organisms are replaced by radical new ones. 1
Those surface attributes of Kyle Bruckmann’s music that engender this association—relatively
static interludes broken by short bursts of hyperactivity, resulting in abrupt, extreme shifts in
mood as well as “evolutionary progress” in the formations of musical elements, their interplay
and development—have, lurking beneath them, a disruptive intelligence at work, showing scant
interest in nineteenth-century ideals of “progress” and “evolution.” In his cheerfully contrarian
way, he debunks any connection between his music and punctuated equilibrium: “That’s pretty
cool! Because I don’t have the slightest idea what it is.”
Cozying up to Bruckmann’s sonic world is like hugging a saguaro cactus: it’s beautiful, rare,
monumental, and ripe with nourishment accessible to only the most puncture-proof of admirers.
Just when you’re thinking you recognize something or know what’s happening or is about to
happen, a barb of The Unexpected pokes you right in the assumption. Bruckmann’s music is
about experience in the moment; the pleasure and challenge of new sounds and new ways of
listening; engaging in the real-time process of applying meaning to seemingly chaotic and
unrelated forms. In the post-Cage continuum—with all sounds being equal, and shifting sonic
relationships/juxtapositions providing what if any “meaning” is to be found—the art of
improvisation has become one of recontextualization, not just of cool sounds but of modes of
being. In his own words:
My composing is governed by the mindset of an improviser. I’m after a
fundamentally social music; in one sense, this involves my obsession with the
productive tension to be found at the borders between genres and aesthetic
philosophies, with all their attendant socio-cultural baggage. In another, it implies
that the skills inherent to the act of making music of any kind in real time—
attention, intention, communication, flexibility, spontaneity, etc.—are conceived of
as foreground. I tend to think of these procedural elements as the real
compositional materials that melody, harmony, rhythm and the like are employed
to realize, rather than the other way around.
1 See Gould, S.J., and N. Eldredge. “Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution
Reconsidered.” Paleobiology 3 (1977): pp. 115–151.
I’m far more interested in listening and playing than in writing; what I do write
makes grudging concessions to the score as a problematic literary means to an
auditory end. I try to design materials with internal logic and contrapuntal
integrity, but above all I focus on their potential for development in the hands of
my colleagues. The notation is idiosyncratic and incomplete; the tasks required are
often intentionally impossible to perfect. Building a degree of inevitable failure
into the system ensures that the liberating energy of the “mistake” is not only
acceptable, but entirely the point. Detours and derailments are always an option.
I prefer to outline form in broad strokes, steering dramatic contour in admittedly
rather traditional ways. But the heart of the matter—the fleshing out of materials
—is entrusted as much as possible to the players, and not just in the sense of
theme-and-improvised-solos. I’m particularly interested in games and processes
that yield richly nuanced results through the simplest, most readily discernable
possible means. It’s crucial to play this music with my friends, in a context of
mutual
trust
and
mischievous
play.
Challenging,
koan-riddled,
potentially
exasperating fun, but fun nonetheless.
Along with fun comes responsibility. Bruckmann’s had some experience bringing light to the
masses, having been a radio DJ (in Texas, no less). As a composer, however, he pushes the
responsibility of enlightenment straight into the ears of the individual audient. Keeping it fun
(for performers and listeners) while administering this solemn duty is the miracle of this music.
Keep your wits (and wit) about you, and you may just evolve into a higher-order organism.
Visceral fun: Steve Adams’s exhilarating solo launch in Procedural inducing a collective (silent) roar
among the assembled in studio. Exasperated fun: Matt Ingalls’s and Ta r a Flandreau’s recurring
entrances in Ta r p i t (insistently recalling Ives’s Unanswered Question ). Zen fun: volleys of melodic
koan challenges, ping-ponging across the wasteland of Cell Structure. Any aesthetic invested in
“progress” and “resolution” smells of old books in the fresh air of such music, where one epoch
follows another, the accreted lithostrata of history not just buried but squashed, obliterated by the
ever-flowing eruption of hot, molten NOW. Even Orgone Accelerator , for CD playback (what used to
be called “tape music”) and therefore presumably conveying the exact same unfolding of sonic
information with each performance, was brought into being with “the mindset of an improviser.”
Surely it’s the audience’s duty to come to the music with the same type of mind?
The art of musical improvisation is first and foremost one of listening , of taking in and
recomposing what you’re hearing. Listening as an improviser means a relaxed letting-go of
preconceived ideas of what one thinks of as “music,” and a profound acceptance of whatever is
going on, even if what’s going on violates your most heartfelt notions of musicality. As Myles
Boisen once wrote, “The textbook incinerates itself as it is written, pal.” 2 That’s what makes
improvisation the most dangerous game: often, and without warning, a sudden self-subversion is
required to keep the ball rolling. Re-generate your music out of your own ashes, over and over.
There’s nothing to hold onto, because music is always and only happening in the now. You might
think you’re learning some rules as you go through this process, but even rules forged in this
2 Boisen, notes to (Y)EARBOOK Vol. 3, Rastascan CD BRD101 (1992).
moment may be shattered in the next. John Cage put it this way: “I’m not interested in learning.
I’m interested in change.” 3 Cage, whose feelings about improvisation were darkened by years of
seeing classically-trained musicians do it poorly, was speaking of his own composing, but the idea
applies here. “Learning” implies an accumulation of ideas, and of the soft, imperceptible
surrender to the comfort of “what I already like.” Accumulation weighs you down, drags you
behind the moment. Sorry—no carry-on baggage on this flight. And no seats, either! (Really, it’s
a shame Mr. Cage isn’t around to hear musicians such as those on this disk—surely it’d be an
experience rewarding enough to change his accumulated notions about improvisation.)
Kyle Bruckmann is one of the most self-subverting people one could hope to meet. When talking
to him about his composing or his playing, one feels sometimes one has met a guy who’s not
much impressed by this dude Kyle Bruckmann. Of course he’s got an ego, just as any creative
person has, but enveloping that ego is a shape-shifter of the first order, with the whole bundle
enveloped in a cloud of self-effacement. To span the distance between classically-trained,
professional oboist to circuit-bending punk-noise-rock composer/bandleader—with all that other
stuff in between—requires a nature that is not just ever-ready but eager to throw off its shell of
identity and appropriate a new one (we might as well mention he’s a steady-as-she-goes husband
and father, too). Maybe always erasing your tracks is the only sane way to go about it.
All his protesting to the contrary, Bruckmann’s composing is rigorous. The act of composing
often seats itself in an arbitrary decision, calibration, or analogue—“This composition exploits a
pitch-set generated from the pattern of raisins I saw in my kid’s oatmeal this morning” or
whatever—just as all scientific theorems start with “Let us assume that . . . .” Thankfully, that sort
of silliness is absent from Bruckmann’s scores, and the notes seem to be standing in for nothing
but the sounds they chart. Start with the notes in Cell Structure : a finely tuned set of inverted
intervals in section D (minute mark 247), returning, an octave higher, in D (702), and
near the end of the piece, temporally stretched (957). The fine-tuning is all about de -tuning:
over the course of Cell Structure , the two instrumentalists intercourse with the notes, smearing and
prodding with false fingers. There’s a breakout moment at section E (849) where the horns
attempt to assert their intellectual and physical supremacy over an ominous digitized heartbeat
and glitchy fleabites, to no avail: a final, overwhelming detonation stops them cold. The final
recurrence of section D’s melodic mirrors unravels over vaguely reverberant pre-echoes,
sounding like a surrealist recitation of “Taps.” Suddenly a slam of needle-drops from the
electronic track shuts the door on our feeble indulgences in allegories of “what the music sounds
like.” Just noise, and we’re done.
From the score: “Advances from cell to cell are triggered by unmistakable sonic cues in the electronic part. Double
barlines are thunderous blarps; dashed barlines are jagged electroshocks.” Each advance is a door opening
into yet another incarceration. Faintly reminiscent of Stockhausen’s Te l e m u s i k and the Lescalleet-
nmperign collaborations, with a nod to Anthony Braxton’s language music (not to mention
Bruckmann’s solo CD Gasps and Fissures ), Cell Structure is perhaps the starkest exposition of
Bruckmann’s art. Humans attempt a détente with their electronic overlords but, in the end,
remain wistfully, echoingly exiled on the far side of a no-man’s-land of blarps and electrocutions,
locked within the muscle-cell limits of instrumental technique and the brain cells’ illusion of
passing time.
3 Cage, interview with Ed Herrmann, KPFA-FM, ca. 1990.
Composing for a bigger sonic playpen in On Procedural Grounds, Bruckmann gets personal. 4 All of
the major cues and sections in the score are written for players, not instruments. Thus, when
Ochs of Rova starts with the paint-peeling tenor sax after the energetic, tumbling “tune” is done,
the score says “HEAD & LARRY SOLO.” Every name gets a turn, some in duos or trios, but the
Rova masters are each granted a solo over differently orchestrated backgrounds. Unfolding over
nearly a half-hour’s time, it’s a huge, sprawling canvas Bruckmann’s laid out for the
Wrack/Rova+E machine. Dichotomies are transcended in abundance: compo/improv,
fixed/moving, rhythm/horns, Rova/Wrack—even left/right is messed with, in the electronics
mix: Perkis is left channel while Robair’s sounds bounce back and forth in stereo space, taking
both channels. Ultimately providing the strongest chain of commonality is Rova, at this point in
their deep and wide history more force of nature than musical institution. Their epic backstory
(reaching to 1978 at least) has infused Rova with the ability to sound like a solo instrument when
they’re all playing, and like a quartet when it’s just one guy blowing.
4 The composer notes:
In a social music, you orchestrate for particular individuals at least as much as for instruments.
Relationships are key. The roster of musicians on hand here is breathtaking, and a humbling encapsulation
of much of my artistic life to date. Wrack convened at the pinnacle of my time in Chicago, as my attempt
to live up to the city’s Creative Music legacy, and remains to this day my lifeline to that incredibly fertile
scene. sfSound is the best thing that has happened to me creatively since moving to the Bay Area,
providing the most consistent source of opportunities and provocations for my development as interpreter,
composer, and instigator. Assembling the cast of the title piece was an attempt to bridge these two
chapters and cities, and to triangulate them with a third, more seminal stage. It was a practice of gratitude,
and the fact that it actually happened is deeply meaningful to me in ways I can best express only by
indulging in a bit of personal narrative:
1993, Houston TX. I’m an undergrad at Rice University, diligently trying to master the oboe,
gamely trying to drink the house Kool-Aid regarding the instrument’s natural habitat (namely, the High
Art of Western European High Imperialism). My heart is really across a muddy field from the
conservatory, at campus radio station KTRU 91.7 FM. As DJ and co-Music Director, I gorge myself,
launching from the hardcore and industrial that fueled my adolescence, through the gateway drug of John
Zorn, into the realms of avant-garde jazz. This is all very much to my teachers’ dismay: I’m hardly
supposed to be listening to records of Mozart when I should be locked in the practice room instead.
Somehow, I internalize that all this is degenerate dalliance I’ll have to outgrow upon graduation to fly
straight and get an orchestra job. Enter Creative Music, Bay Area style. The station’s General Manager
and Jazz Director have the audacious idea to blow our entire budget for the year hosting a two-day
festival featuring Rova and the Splatter Trio (the late-lamented skronk outfit of Gino Robair, Myles
Boisen, and Dave Barrett). Gino and Myles walk through one of the very first rehearsals of my
preposterous noise-rock band Lozenge. I interview Rova on the air; in a fit of exasperated befuddlement
betraying my conservatory damage, I ask “so, wait, is your music composed or not?” Later that evening,
in the same recital hall where I’d dozed through countless classmates’ Brahms, I’m punched square in the
face with a conclusion so obvious in retrospect it’s almost pathetic: this music is being composed before
my eyes, between my ears, by fully engaged, empowered artists. This music is vital, legit, alive; it speaks
to me, it matters, and maybe I could—no, have to —actually play it myself. On the oboe, even.
2003, Oakland CA. After several years of total immersion in improvised music (at U. Michigan
and in the heady brew of fin de siècle Chicago), the siren song of the Last Place on Earth gets too strong
to ignore. My very first gig as a Bay Area resident: one of 40 performing a realization of Gino’s opera I,
Norton (a concert prominently featured in Tim Perkis’ documentary Noisy People ). I sit down next to Jon
Raskin; there’s still a KTRU bumper sticker on his bari case.
Besides Rova, the instrumental cohort in Procedural includes Bruckmann’s beyond-category band
Wrack, which traces to his Chicago years. Wrack takes on jazz a bit like Bartók approached
Balkan music—clinically—incisively translating the inbred language and tropes into a hybrid
that’s at once synthetic and utterly stand-alone. Drummer Daisy and bassist Hatwich provide a
sure, abiding underpinning when it’s swing-time, even if the notes Bruckmann’s given them are
as off-kilter as he can make them. (That vamp underpinning the “head”—a 9+5+9+4 cycle—
recalls Bartókian funk, again.) Hatwich and violist Paulson furnish a memorably vacant interlude
following Ochs’ solo (the switch happens around the 8-minute mark). Stein’s bass clarinet flutters
and barks at Robair’s electronics, providing an abstract bridge between the pulse-based flights of
Raskin and Adams.
Pointillist cues interrupting/directing steady-state sound is tactically used at the outset of On
Procedural Grounds , only, contra Cell Structure , live electronics provide the wash while the horns
furnish the sonic openings. There follows (at 334) the vamp + head formula beaten to death
in jazz history; here Bruckmann resurrects it with a lurching zombie footstep overlaid with
“tumbling, frantic” melodic lines in a horn quartet drawn equally from Wrack and Rova, oboe-
bass clarinet-alto sax-tenor sax. The same material comes back, slightly recast, at 2449,
revealing the overall form for Procedural to be an arch, another thing Mr. Bartók liked to play with.
(Or is it the hoary head-solos-head jazz construct? Mr. Bruckmann would probably like to have it
both ways.) Any such abstraction is incidental to the experience of the music which, in a piece so
big and kaleidoscopic in its revolving foregrounds and backgrounds, is more like a mod(ular) road
movie with high-wattage cameos in every scene: each emerging star turn obliterates the
preceding one. Reinforcing this impression is Bruckmann’s preference for abrupt tape-splice-like
transitions over smooth segues, displayed at nearly every junction.
Orgone Accelerator is another of those Bruckmann-instigated experiences that seems to erase itself
as it proceeds—not that it isn’t memorable, but that each new airing is bafflingly virginal. Erasing
the human element from music, à la the Berlin echtzeit movement of the last fifteen years, is
something Bruckmann’s well acquainted with (hear his duo project with Ernst Karel, EKG). But
he’s able to hold on to humor, somehow, which isn’t always heard in such decidedly ascetic music.
At 5 the mostly oboe-generated sounds cease—in fact, the whole thing stops dead—and after a
second or two, another process starts up, a distorted throb + crackles that would seem to have
nothing to do with what came before. But have we forgotten the other throb (1–3), which
fills the air to the point of suffocation? If all this is somehow a tone parallel to eight minutes of
heavy breathing inside an Orgone Box, we’re convinced.
Bruckmann, in response to the observation that significant events in Orgone Accelerator happen at
minutes 3, 5, and 8—and was this the result of an application of the Fibonacci sequence —says,
“Gosh . . . no, not consciously. I guess organic certitudes DO have a way of asserting themselves
organically.”
I suppose it’s less immediately obvious how a faith in real-time interaction and
open forms translates to “tape music,” which is susceptible to infinite editing and
paralyzing perfectionism. But I approach my electronic work in much the same
spirit as I do the notes I scribble on the page, with a similar trust in accident and a
healthy dose of bricolage .

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