Cold Peace Counterpoints

by Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer
ReR ST3, 2008
$15.95 US, £11.50
Distributor’s website: http://www.rermegacorp.com.

Businesscide

by Michael Maksymenko
ReR MM1, 2008
$15.95 US, £11.50
Distributor’s website: http://www.rermegacorp.com.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University

mosher@svsu.edu

Too intense, too demanding, too disturbing. That these two CDs weren’t appropriate workshop background music for the first-year students of my Beginning 2D Design class was evident in the first few notes of Stevan Tickmayer’s first cut. For Tickmayer’s Cold Peace Counterpoints and Michael Maksymenko’s Businesscide are challenging projects that require attentive listening to be appreciated.

The “Introduzzione Molto Nervoso” that is the first movement of “Concerto Grosso” finds the listener deep in the rising foam of Tickmayer’s frenetic piano. Electronics proceed as if disgorged from a dumptruck full of old radios (or their mid-century shortwave transmissions), tumbling into a pit. “Pazzamezzo Ongaro II” sounds like Emerson, Lake and Palmer (showcasing Chris Cutler’s Palmeresque drums) with a heavy musk of orientalism, while the ascending runs of “Polyostinato” highlight Robert Drake’s bass, ending in piano chord inquiries that might be asked by Sun Ra. The “Bugle Counterpoint” sounds more like digitally-enhanced virtuosity upon a harpsichord than bugle, dodging cartoonish vectors of double-bass; imagine cellist Charlotte Moorman as Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. The “Sempre Pulsato” lies far undersea, where the cans on the back of a wedding party’s car clang as they bounce along the sea floor. It then ends in a dubious Gypsy camp seized by disco drumming.

Tickmayer’s “Five Bagatelles for a Polyhistor”, dedicated to the memory of a painter and poet called Baba Dada, begin with “Kazimir Malevich on a Beach”. Its major chords and contrapuntal percussion seem to lose their bearings after a while, wandering in befuddlement, in birdlike piano and a little jingle on the organ. “Our Fashion is Our Brain” is straight ahead Lion-Sleeps-Tonight rock, while “The Brave Ventilator” (title of a Baba Dada poem) could be the theme from an after-school TV special, percolating till it finds treasure. “Crippled Tango #2” also quotes gospel blues, leaving the listener wondering if its muttering men, and those oddball vocals in “Ali Jednog Dana...”, might be the pianist’s late friend Baba Dada himself.

Michael Maksymenko first made his mark with his trio Kräldjursanstalten, featuring the twin Agaton brothers. Maksymenko attributed an extra-sensory understanding to the twins, comparable to that found in the world’s best hockey teams after intense training. Former student hockey player Maksymenko was greatly respected the Russian national team and its coach Anatolij Tarasov. “Det Löser Sig Atematiskt” finds the drummer Maksymenko’s fists and feet flying in all directions, while “Hon Fångade Min Blick” opens with echoey guitar, before a bar band bellow that you might find in a Swedish dive where Captain Beefheart was the bartender. “Voodooboogie” and “Det Enda Raka” are driven by a likeable holler, much rock fustian, and drums that prove a perfect foil for Stefan Anaton’s guitar. “Ibland Om Vardagarna” is a grand rock rave up, and if the recording here is clean, the listener can imagine its assaultive heavy metal discordance in low-rent performance. “Dom”, from Maksymenko’s post-trio solo album, features the refreshing vocalist Eva Sonneson.

This reviewer remembers when Maksymenko’s Crazy Backwards Alphabet was a stalwart among odd late-eighties San Francisco bands, an eclectic scene that included Ibbilly Bibbilly and Jungle Dinner (whose female drummer often took off her shirt in performance). Crazy Backwards Alphabet’s “Ten Year Anniversary” is an American-voiced narrative over musical delicacy and precision. “Beneath the Valley of the Dropped D” begins promisingly with lepidopterist keyboard. Yet until it finally coalesces into well-coordinated sections that return to a coordinated theme, the piece devolves into a long improvisational jam, at times besotted with Henry Kaiser’s self-indulgent rich guy guitar. There are notable drum solos and duets between Maksymenko and John “Drumbo” French, who was in Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band during its “Trout Mast Replica” and “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” sessions. Still, too much of “Beneath the Valley” is reminiscent of the Sunday Night Music sessions organized twenty years ago in Palo Alto by an ad executive named Harry, where Silicon Valley smartypants would improvise away, nobody listening to each other. On this band’s last cut, Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts”, sonic tendrils are flying as if from the fingertips of those Chinese ribbon twirlers, until caught in an electronic storm.

Businesscide is a drummer’s album, where Maksymenko’s dense drum fills are sure to be appreciated for their virtuosity by drummers. Maybe also by my design students when they’re out of class, and instead focused on building their own complex musics, not the curriculum’s austere Bauhaus-style color laboratory exercises. The complicated piano of Stevan Tickmayer and drums of Michael Maksymenko are anything but austere.