Bug Music | David Rothenberg

 

Bug Music | David Rothenberg

Gruen 122 (EU) | Terra Nova Music TN 1309 (USA) | Audio CD > [order]

Reviews

 

There has been rhythm on this planet for millions of years longer than humans have opened their mouths to sing.  Long before birds, long before whales, insects have been thrumming, scraping, and drumming complex beats out into the world.  David Rothenberg decided to investigate the resounding beats of cicadas, crickets, katydids, leafhoppers and water bugs in his unusual third foray into music made with and out of the animal world.  After working with birds and whales, he now tackles the minute complex tunes of the entomological universe, building songs live nad in the studio with cicadas who emerge only once every seventeen years, treehoppers who tap complex vibrations onto plant stalks, and a tiny beetle who makes one of the animal world’s loudest sounds by vibrating its penis underwater.

 

He is joined by guitarist Jürjendal, who has studied with Robert Fripp and Eno, Timothy Hill of the Harmonic Choir, Umru Rothenberg on iPad, and millions of tapping, screeching, and howling bugs—Hear them before they hear you.

 

Excerpts:

 

Track 1
MP3
Track 4
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Track 8
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Track 12
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Track 15
MP3

 

16 Tracks (69′00″)
CD (2000 copies)

 

Sound Art Series by Gruenrekorder
Germany / 2013 / Gruen 122 (EU) / Terra Nova Music TN 1309 (USA)
LC 09488 / EAN 4050486089699

 


 

Reviews

 

“Rothenberg’s sounds reveal a fine and subtle music that crosses the boundary between water and land.” —Jon Hassell

 

“A veritable tour de force that illuminates the primal connection between insect sound and the human sense of rhythm, music, and noise.” —Lang Elliot

 

Denis Boyer | FEARDROP
Dans son conte Sylvius, Henri Bosco a écrit : « Jadis, Sylvius chantonnait ; et, le soir, de sa clarinette, au fond de son jardin, il tirait quelque brève mélodie qui faisait sortir de la vasque les grenouilles émerveillées. Les grenouilles, qui sont des bêtes sociables, répondaient à la clarinette, et Sylvius était content de ce concert lacustre, dont le chant animal se prolongeait parfois, par une ou deux grenouilles plus sentimentales, jusqu’au fond de la nuit, paisiblement. »

 

À l’époque romantique, Ludwig Tieck organisait dans son jardin des concerts afin que la musique des hommes et celle de la nature s’unissent. Plus tard vint la musique à programme qui parfois intégrait des bruits d’animaux à la composition. Mais c’est bien plus encore avec le field recording et son utilisation que ce mélange peut reprendre en des termes modernes. L’un des exemples les plus remarquables dans ce domaine est celui de Yannick Dauby dont les synthétiseurs s’apparient de la façon la plus fluide avec les chants de batraciens de Taïwan. David Rothenberg ose peut-être plus, il intègre et use en écho des rythmes dans sa musique qui se marient avec ceux des insectes et des grenouilles. Car David Rothenberg joue parfois, en pleine nature, en compagnie des insectes, de nuit comme de jour (ainsi avec les cigales). J’aime particulièrement la deuxième pièce de son CD Bug Music, orientalisante à souhait, augmentée d’un écho jazz mécanique et de la participation en crécelle de sauterelles Archaboilus musicus dont les frottements peuvent produire plusieurs tonalités. Avec Bug Music, David Rothenberg dédie au rythme primordial, celui que la nature a offert à l’homme, un travail qui le convoque, mais qui devant lui ne reste pas intimidé ; le musicien ne suspend pas son souffle à la parole des insectes, il échange avec eux. Et tout comme eux utilisent leur langage instinctif, d’un minimalisme hypnotique, il offre en retour sa complexité de compositeur, sa subtilité humaine, un véritable effort d’assemblage et d’improvisation sur clarinette et ordinateur. Ainsi, chacun joue selon sa nature, le rythme, insectoïde ou robotique – c’est égal – pave le chemin d’une vague boisée où le souffle déhanché s’encadre de basses, de glockenspiels, traçant des voies de lumière auxquelles les chants d’insectes rendent un hommage par leur géométrie accordée à un crépuscule que la musique de David Rothenberg parvient à fixer suspendu tout au long de cette musique de chambre pastorale. […]
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Kari Nevalainen | Inner-Audio
There has been rhythm on this planet for millions of years longer than humans have opened their mouths to sing. Long before birds, long before whales, insects have been thrumming, scraping, and drumming complex beats out into the world.

ECM recording artist David Rothenberg, who’ve performed and recorded on clarinet with Jan Bang, Scanner, Glen Velez, Karl Berger, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, and the Karnataka College of Percussion, decided to investigate the resounding beats of cicadas, crickets, katydids, leafhoppers and water bugs in his unusual third foray into music made with and out of the animal world. After working with birds and whales, he now tackles the minute complex tunes of the entomological universe, building songs live nad in the studio with cicadas who emerge only once every seventeen years, treehoppers who tap complex vibrations onto plant stalks, and a tiny beetle who makes one of the animal world’s loudest sounds by vibrating its penis underwater.

He is joined by guitarist Robert Jürjendal, who’s worked with Fripp and Eno, Timothy Hill of the Harmonic Choir, Umru Rothenberg on iPad, and millions of tapping, screeching, and howling bugs. Both a CD and a book are available on the subject.

At the same David Rothenberg turns this work into a new sound installation for the Finnish sound-art gallery Akusmata, based on the two basic ways insects synchronize their sounds: overlapping irregular rhythms, and overlapping songs that blur into a drone. The drone sounds are based on the song of the seventeen year cicada, and the rhythmic patterns are based on the song of the snowy tree cricket.

The multi-channel sound installation also includes sounds from other surprising insects: Uhlers Katydid, said to have the most complex of all insect sounds, the Common True Kaydid, and the Pine Sawyer Beetle.

Additional synthetic sounds, inspired by the insect world, are added from computer and iPad.
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Holger Adam | testcard #23
Drei Veröffentlichungen vom Frankfurter Gruenrekorder-Label, jede versehen mit höheren akademischen Weihen und ebenso konzeptuell aufgeladen. Kopf-Hörer-Musik. An begleitenden Texten zu den Veröffentlichungen mangelt es folglich nicht, und es ist in der Tat gut zu wissen, was sich jeweils hinter dem, was man zu hören glaubt, verbirgt. Dabei sind, zumindest im Falle von David Rothenberg und Budhaditya Chattopa dhyay, bereits die Titel sehr sprechend: Rothenberg hat buchstäblich live im Feld mit allerlei Insekten Musik gemacht. Begleitend zur CD ist auch ein Buch erschienen: »How Insects Gave Us Rhythm And Noise« – und die Erfahrung einer beeindruckend mikrotonalen Klangumgebung hat vielleicht der eine oder die andere selbst schon gemacht: in der Wiese liegend, Grillen lauschend. Rothenberg hat die Klänge dieser und anderer Insekten eingefangen, sie als Musik hörbar kontextualisiert und um eigene Töne dazu ergänzt. Das Zusammenspiel der entomologischen Orchester mit den menschlichen Gastmusikern klingt zumeist abwechslungsreich und beein druckend, an der einen oder an deren Stelle spielen die Menschen etwas zu gefällig zum feingliedrigen Noise der Insekten – an den Tieren liegt es nicht! Budhaditya Chattopadhyays Eye Contact With The City ist das Pendant zu einer Video-/Klanginstallation, die Bilder und Sounds aus den Straßen Bangalores ausstellt. Nachbearbeitet erinnern die sphärisch verwehten Klänge allerdings nur noch entfernt, wie durch Fensterglas wahrgenommen, an die Geräusche einer Zehn-Millionen-Metropole. Ich nehme an, dass die Bilder zu den Klängen der Installation hier und da nicht zueinander passend präsentiert wurden, was den Verfremdungsefekt verstärken würde. Die Recordings auf Eye Contact With The City lassen zumindest keine eindeutige Zuordnung der Geräuschquellen mehr zu. Die Stadt als Klangkörper verschmilzt zu einer Industrial-Noise-Klangfläche, die dazu einlädt mit den Ohren erkundet zu werden. Wenn die Ohren nach den Insekten und der Stadt noch nicht müde sind, dann gibt es mit Mark Lorenz Kyse las Eins+ u. a. noch zu hören, wie der Musiker klingt, wenn er Musik macht. Mikrofone rücken Kysela, der auf diese Weise ein kompositorisches Konzept des Komponisten Christoph Ogiermann realisiert, so sehr auf die Pelle, dass nicht nur das Instrument und die Klänge die es erzeugt, gehört werden können, sondern auch der sich mit dem Instrument bewegende Körper des Musikers. Insgesamt steht der physische Akt des Musikmachens im Zentrum, nicht so sehr das damit einhergehende klang liche Ergebnis. Dieser Logik, nach Klängen diszipliniert unter verschiedenen Bedingungen und nach Maßgabe aller vorhandenen Möglichkeiten der Instrumente zu forschen, ohne ein Klangerlebnis im Sinne einer »schönen Musik« zu beabsichtigen, folgt Eins+ über 70 Minuten lang, in denen Kysela noch fünf weitere Kompositionen von Alvin Lucier, Uwe Rasch und drei weiteren Vertretern Neuer Musik realisiert. Eine Herausforderung, Meta-Musik zu der man das beiliegende Textbuch studieren muss, um eine erweiterte Vorstellung davon zu erhalten, was es jeweils zu hören gibt. Keine Musik für jeden Tag, aber das ist auch sicher mit keiner der drei Veröffentlichungen beabsichtigt.
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Wonderful Wooden Reasons
Quite a lot of the music I write about in Wonderful Wooden Reasons is decidedly insectile in nature filled with skittery and restless taps, creaks, rustles, scrapes, rasps and chirrs.  Usually these serve as decoration, the texture to the main sounds of the piece.  Here though clarinetist and saxophonist (and more) Rothenberg uses the sounds of various creepy crawlies (and creepy flyies) as a full and equal (if maybe unaware) collaborator on each of the pieces as he (and a few other collaborators) improvise around the songs of the various crickets, katydids, water boatmen, leafhoppers, beetles and many more.
The result? Well, it’s beautiful.  Rothenberg is a sympathetic and restrained improviser with a really mellow and melodic style that is a joy to listen to.  Obviously his contributions cannot help but impart a certain ambience to the proceedings as often the sparsity and melancholy of his (and the other human participant’s) playing complements but belies the furore of the insect noise he’s accompanying but that, I would suggest, is perhaps unavoidable and also perhaps just in my interpretation.
What is for sure though is that ‚Bug Music‘ is beautifully made and provides many moments of sublime enjoyment listening to these wacky chaps jamming with the beetles (sorry) and this is a beautiful set that had me transfixed from start to finish each time I pressed play on it.
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Martin P | Musique Machine
Here’s an intriguing release: the album notes inform us that Rothenberg has made every attempt to “play along” with insect song – playing along live in the field, playing along with recordings (raw or processed) and creating his own insect sounds artificially. He interacts using “bass clarinet, clarinet, seljefoyte and soprano saxophone”, aided and abetted by a few other hands on other instruments. The cd arrives in a playfully packaged digipak, with album notes and text for each individual track.

 

The opening track, “Magicicada Unexpected Road” is reasonably uneventful, essentially Rothenberg improvising against a swirling wall of insect noise; with his son, Umru, providing electronic squiggles and noises in the mix. Intriguing enough. Hereafter though, the “intriguing” album turns to dung (insect metaphor, check). I’m going to be fairly brutal here (its been a while), so fans of Rothenberg’s work should feel free to stop reading now. Firstly, the second piece, “Katydid Prehistory”, introduces Robert Jurjendal’s guitar – and its horrible. Unfortunately, it has that processed bluesy jazz sound, so beloved of noxious guitarists; he uses it to play… bluesy jazz/jazzy blues and Rothenberg helps him along with similar. Its banal work, alas; even worse, every track featuring Jurjendal is thus rendered unlistenable  – except, perhaps, “Insect Drummers 2: The Water Boatman’s Loudest Penis”; where the guitar work is reduced to scrabbling sound effects. Rothenberg’s playing is safe and unadventurous, often operating in languid, noir-ish jazz territories with a few exploratory peeps and poots. There’s an atonal flavour to a lot of his playing, but there’s little here that would stand up on its own. Which is unfortunate, because – more often than not – his accompaniments are often very uninspiring too. The insect sounds are often backgrounded by the dominant Rothenberg, whereas its seems obvious to my mind that the concept of the album would benefit from a more just blending of elements – treating the soloist as just another bug. Sometimes the insect sounds take on the appearance of odd shading for the pieces – like a jazz band with curious electronics; sometimes they are more foregrounded and heavily processed, though always in a somewhat rudimentary fashion. To be honest, the raw sounds are beautiful enough on their own, surely – so if you’re going to process them in any way, they deserve a bit more imagination and exploration. Arguably the best tracks are those which involve the overtone singing of Timothy Hill – largely, I think, because his vocals operate as sound, rather than trying to impose jazz/etc melodies on the insect sounds. The first Hill track, “Glynwood Nights”, though, raises a most pertinent issue for “Bug Music”: “authenticity”.

 

The album introduction finishes with these words (worth quoting in full): “The three live tracks were recorded out in the field, with no overdubbing by real human musicians and real insects. The others were created in the studio, but all the music has been played, not programmed.”. “Live”, “no overdubbing”, “real…musicians” and “played, not programmed”: authenticity, authenticity, authenticity. These are reasonably hackneyed words today, anyway; but Rothenberg doesn’t just want his cake, he has to have a munch as well. Skirting the (to my ears) suspiciously cavernous reverb on his bass clarinet on “Magicicada Warm Springs”, my main bone of contention is his text accompanying “Glynwood Nights”: “The result is live and somewhat slowed down to reveal the subtleties of human/bug interaction”. I know this is nit-picking, but you can’t have it both ways. (Though, either way is completely fine by me.) Rothenberg is very aware in this area (the execrable “What Makes Them Dance?” sees him singlehandedly multi-tracking an improvising jazz quartet), but the picture he pushes is largely of him standing in a field, joining the insect throng – whereas “Bug Music” sounds anything but that, unfortunately.

 

Its hard to know who I feel worse for: human ears or the abused bugs. Insects are wondrous creatures, with wondrous sounds and they deserve better, here. I could see Rothenberg’s ideas played out as a 1950’s novelty exotica record: “Bug Jazz!”; with a jazz combo joined by crudely dubbed insect sounds; but otherwise, I feel the tiny invertebrates are crying out for a John Butcher, or Richard Chartier, to sing with them. To some extent, the album art says everything you need to know: its cosy, cute and very cleanly designed; which tells you all you need about Rothenberg’s notions towards the insects and the material sound/production of “Bug Music”. The obvious counterpoint to this, is Dave Philips; who has long worked with insect sounds to great effect. Although, to be fair,  he most often leaves the sounds unprocessed and unaccompanied, he nevertheless explores the social and sonic lives of bugs with infinitely more respect and sonic interest than Rothenberg. In “Bug Music”, the insects are as declawed as Jurjendal’s guitar.
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Dietrich Heißenbüttel | Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 05/2013
«Die Grille hatte den ganzen Sommer gesungen», so beginnt die moralisierende Fabel von Jean de la Fontaine, der diesem nutzlosem Treiben die arbeitsame Ameise gegenüberstellt. Als Musik wurde das Zirpen der Grillen bereits in vergangenen Epochen wahrgenommen. Der Gesang der Zikaden in einer Sommernacht bietet bis heute, sofern nicht vom Verkehrslärm übertönt, die beste Gelegenheit einer räumlichen Wahrnehmung durch das Ge­hör: Es sind Geräusche, die süchtig machen können und einem wie der Anblick des Sternenhimmels ein Gefühl der Einheit mit der unermess­lichen Natur geben.
David Rothenberg, der sich auf ähnliche Weise bereits mit den Gesängen der Vögel und der Wale auseinandergesetzt hat, ist mit seinem Sohn Umru in die Wälder von Virginia gezogen, als sich die Zikaden dort wie nur alle 17 Jahre vernehmen ließen: er mit der Klarinette, der Sohn mit dem iPad. Ein andermal begleitete ihn der Obertonsänger Timothy Hill, ein drittes Mal zieht er allein aus und stimuliert die Zikaden mit einem lauten «Schhhhhh».
Der Philosophieprofessor und Jazzmusiker verheimlicht nicht seine Fachkenntnisse der Entomologie, über die er ein dazugehöriges Buch veröffentlicht hat. Aber auf der CD geht es um die musikalischen Möglichkeiten, die sich aus der Interaktion mit dem Klang der Insekten ergeben. Er verwendet Aufnahmen als Samples, bringt mit Hilfe des befreundeten Forschers Charles Lindsay die Zikaden dazu, sich auf dem Mikrofon niederzulassen, konfrontiert die unterschiedlichen Zirp- und Schrapgeräusche mit elektronisch erzeugten Doubles und seiner Bassklarinette. In mehreren Tracks rhythmisiert er die Klänge der Grillen, Zikaden und Grashüpfer, unterlegt sie mit den rockigen Rhythmen des E-Gitarristen Robert Jürjendal oder im letzten Titel mit einem vorwärtstreibenden, komplexen elektronischen Beat.
Die von den Insekten erzeugten Geräusche sind dabei mal Impulsgeber, mal Gegenstand der Aufmerksamkeit des Hörens, mal auch einfach perkussiver Hintergrund für Rothenbergs Klarinettenläufe. Dem Klang der Maracas vergleichbar, bleibt doch jederzeit eine andere Dimension, jenseits der menschlichen Sphäre. Es ist nicht so sehr eine wirkliche Interaktion zwischen Mensch und Insekt in dem Sinne, dass die Zikaden auf die Klarinette antworten und umgekehrt. Eher ist es Rothenberg, der nach Berührungspunkten sucht: Die schnarrenden Klänge der Bassklarinette oder des Obertongesangs resonieren von fern mit den Vibrationen der Schwertschrecke, des gefleckten Langhornbocks oder der Maulwurfsgrille. Die Rhythmen, welche die Buckelgrille beim Trommeln auf Zweige erzeugt, bieten ein Klanggerüst, wie es sich sonst allenfalls mit elektronischen Mitteln herstellen ließe.
Wiewohl sich die Herangehensweise von Stück zu Stück ändert, bleibt doch immer ein faszinierender, klanglich reicher und differenzierter Hintergrund hörbar, der die Gedanken ein Stück weit hinausträgt in die Weite der Sommernacht.

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Brian Olewnick | Just outside
Not Don Byron (just wanted to get that out of the way).
Reed player Rothenberg accompanied by a cast of thousands, if not millions. 16 shortish tracks wherein Rothenberg (plus the odd human accomplice) is heard amidst cicadas, katydids, leafhoppers, crickets and the famed Lesser Water Boatman and its (loudly) vibrating penis. The pieces are more or less „songs“ and easily digestible ones at that, loping along in comfortable grooves. Rothenberg is a good player, has an especially nice sound on the clarinets, but treads a musically very safe pathway here. My first thought was that, if you’re going to take insect sounds seriously (and, of course you would), why not try to deal with them somewhere on their own level instead of using them as a kind of exotic accompaniment? Judging form his website, Rothenberg has garnered a good deal of public notice from this combination of interests, appearing on the Today show, getting a profile in The New Yorker, etc., and it’s easy to see why: the music itself, with the insectile garnish, is non-demanding in the way that Zornish NYC music has become in the last 20 years. The insects, which by and large are great, by the way, sound more adventurous than the anthropoid contributions which are very competent but staid. One of his press blurbs makes a comparison to the late Joe Maneri–now that might have been an interesting pairing, Papa Joe and some bugs. I found myself thinking back to a concert I saw at BAM in the mid-80s, David Byrne leading a host of Brazilian musicians, me in the audience thinking, „Those guys are so much better than you, Mr. Byrne. Please have the grace to leave the stage and let them play.“

 

I don’t mean to be too hard on this. Many people will greatly enjoy it the way they do Frisell, Garbarek and others. It’s well played, well constructed and ingratiating. It just seems odd, to me, to relegate these presumed objects of fascination and awe to such a small supporting role, strikes me as a lost opportunity.

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Review | By freiStil – Magazin für Musik und Umgebung
David Rothenberg generiert da mit ein paar spärlichen Helferlein, meistens aber allein, einen komplexen Soundteppich. Saxofon und Klarinette schweben über dem elektronisch erzeugten Wabern, Rauschen, Blubbern und Ticken. So haben vielfältige Klangerlebnisse ganz nah beieinander Platz, sorgen damit für eine dichte atmosphärische Grunddisposition. Schön, wenn Rothenberg mit warmem, sattem und vollem Bassklarinettenton gegen einen ganzen Insektenschwarm erfolgreich bestehen kann. In einem frühen Gedicht von Antonio Fian waren die Guten die schnelleren Pistoleros; bei Bug Music verliert niemand, es gewinnt nur der geneigte Hörer an Erkenntnis, wenn man sich bewusst aber gedankenlos dieser Klangreise aussetzt. Interessant wäre es zu erfahren, was der Leader mit gleichberechtigten Musikern in einer Livesituation bewerkstelligen würde. Die Frage wird hoffentlich bald beantwortet werden. (ernst)
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VITAL WEEKLY
Rothenberg is a man with many talents. His main subject is the relationship between humanity and nature. The explores the relationship between humans and other species under the aspect of music. Especially as a writer of books like ‘Why birds sing’, ‘Thousand Mile Song’, etc. His newest book ‘Bug Music’ is accompanied with a cd. The same was the case with some of his earlier books. This implies he is not only a writer, but also a composer and musician. For his earlier cd releases he worked with people like Ben Neill, Robert Rich, Lukas Ligeti and DJ Spooky. In 2010  ECM released an album by him with Marilyn Crispell on piano. For his new work ‘Bug Music’ he is joined by guitarist Robert Jurgendal, who worked  with Fripp and Eno, plus Timothy Hill of the Harmonic Choir and Umru Rothenberg on iPad. And above all by thousands of bugs. Long before mankind started making music, all kinds of animals produced sounds that later became aspects of the music created by man like for instance beat and rhythm. Rothenberg formulates it as a thesis that “most likely human music evolved out of the millions of years of listening to the sounds of bugs that filled the soundscape of our ancestors.” Prove is hard to get I’m afraid, but it makes sense and it is an inspiring thought. It  Rothenberg to create music based on the sounds by bugs. In each piece we hear insect or insect-like sounds. He tries to arrange a dialogue with these animal sounds, and respond to the unusual structures that are hidden in them. In most pieces the insects provide some rhythmic base like in ‘Listen outside the ear’ with a Norwegian flute in the lead, or ‘Chirped to death’ that has the overtone singing by Hill on the forefront. Or in ‘Riding Bugz’  that has pastoral patterns by sax and electric guitar. Some of them are recorded live in the open field. For example ‘Glynwood Nights’ where overtone singing Timothy Hill seeks the company of an immense choir of insects. The three pieces that make up the ‘Insect Drummers’ suite, I found the most intriguing. Sensitive sax playing by Rothenberg over incredible insect sounds mixed with sound of electronic origin. Unheard abstract miniatures are the result. (DM)

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Guillermo Escudero | Loop
David Rothenberg is a musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist. As a musician he has been published twelve records and in 2010 released in the prestigious ECM label. He is the author of the book and CD ‚Why Birds Sing‘ which was a documentary for the BBC. ‚Thousand Mile Song‘ is another book about making music with whales and recently was published a new book under the title ‚Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise‘.
Rothenberg argues that for millions of years the beat came out before the man sing. They are insects that have been buzzing, scraping and drumming complex rhythms. He has researched the rhythms of cicadas, crickets, grasshoppers and water bugs.
‚Bug Music‘ shows the sounds of cicadas, treehoppers that take avantage of complex vibrations in the stems of plants and a small beetle that makes one of the loudest sounds in the animal world, vibrating its penis underwater.
Rothenberg plays bass, clarinet, soprano saxophone, electronics, bug sounds, Robert Jürjendal on guitar, Timothy Hill, overtone singing, Umru Rothenberg, ipad and Charles Lindsay, cicada wrangler.
This album moves between free-jazz and avant-garde. Rothenberg produces a combination of pure insect sounds weaving improvised dialogues through he’s clarinet, plus some electronic noises. In relation to the rhythms of insects, Rothenberg responds to them with masterful clarinet blowing, creating a common language between the insects and Rothenberg’s music.
Interesting proposal that shows the various nuances of the sounds of insects, a world unknown to many of us.

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Idwal Fisher | IDWAL FISHER
[…] David Rothenburg likes to blow his Sax too. And his bass clarinet and a Norwegian flute that has no holes. He likes to play along to insects sounds as captured on several tracks here. Rothenburg wanders into the great outdoors to blow improv and play along with the Katydids. The idea being that the insects provide a natural rhythm to Rothenburg’s improvisations. On a number of tracks he’s helped out by friends, most effectively on ‘Glynwood Nights’ where the overtone singing of Timothy Hill compliments the found sounds of nocturnal insects. A live track as recorded in Estonia [‘in which only 50 people were allowed to attend’ it sez here] is perhaps my pick of the bunch, mainly due to it not having much of Rothenburg but lots of a guitarist called Robert Jürjendal whose Hillage like noodlings are the perfect compliment to the nighttime sounds of the Borneo rainforest.

 

I can’t help thinking that I could listen to Rothenburg without the insects and the insects without Rothenburg but I’m stuck with them both. If I was a fan of bad puns I’d say it bugs me but I’m not. The guy obviously loves what he does and has a quirky sense of humour [track 7; Phaaaroah! Surely he’s a Pharoah Sanders fan? And track 9 ‘The Water Boatman’s Loudest Penis’ – ‘do not try this at home’] But for the most part I find these pieces jarring. […]

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textura
On Bug Music, clarinet and soprano saxophone player David Rothenberg communes with all manner of insect creatures, from cicadas and crickets to katydids and engraver beetles. It’s not the first time the ECM recording artist has turned his attention to the natural world: he’s the author of the book-CD project Why Birds Sing and the book Thousand Mile Song, which concerns music-making with whales, and now brings us the seventy-minute Gruenrekorder CD, released concurrently with the book Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise (St Martins Press).

 

Three pieces were recorded live in the field and with no overdubbing added, making them particularly pure examples of human-insect interaction. “Magicicada Unexpected Road,” for example, finds the sounds generated by Rothenberg’s clarinet and his son Umru’s iPad caught within a dense cicada swarm. The other pieces use the insect noises as raw material to be looped and stretched in the studio (the insects’s thrumming and scraping lend themselves well to the construction of rhythm backings), with Rothenberg and Jürjendal joining in, sometimes soloing overtop a thick entomological backdrop and other times simulating call-and-response communications with their tiny collaborators. In that regard some interesting moments arise, such as when Rothenberg tries to respond to the irregular rhythms generated by three-humped treehoppers (“Treehop”).

 

It would be easy for the project concept to overshadow Rothenberg as a musician, but pieces such as “What Makes Them Dance?” and “Riddim Bugz” nicely spotlight his technical abilities as a player, especially when the tunes‘ laid-back grooves allow him to solo so freely; his decision to play bass clarinet on some of the tracks (e.g., “Kikitara”) is a good one, too, given how well its deep-throated croak complements the insect sounds. The presence of guitarist Robert Jürjendal on four pieces also adds a lot to the recording. He serves up a quasi-psychedelic solo on “Katydid Prehistory” that serves as a nice lead-in to Rothenberg’s bluesy reflections, and on “Riddim Bugz” spreads Frisell-esque lines across a regulated mass of crickets and katydids. In essence, the guitar becomes a welcome third voice that adds contrast to the woodwinds and insect noises.

 

In keeping with the cover image, Rothenberg presents the project with a refreshing degree of irreverence. Oh, he’s serious about it, of course, but he’s also not averse to seeing its lighter side—how could one do otherwise when one of the sounds comes from the Water Boatman, a tiny underwater beetle who produces its loud thrum by vibrating its penis underwater (to which Rothenberg dryly comments, “Do not try this at home”). He’s no fanatical purist either who views the alteration of insect sounds as some kind of heinous violation; in reference to to “Glynwood Nights,” for instance, he’s upfront about having slowed down the live outdoors recording in order to better reveal the subtleties of the human-insect interactions. Elsewhere, he’s not averse to including electronics to, as he says, “outbug the real work of bugs, so close to the oscillators and filters of electronic music are the mechanisms of our ancient little friends.”

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The Wire

Little Machines for Singing: David Rothenberg takes on the swarm

 

We praise thee auspicious Cicada, enthroned like a king
On the tree’s summit, thou cheer’st us with exquisite song…
Free from suffering, though hast neither blood nor flesh –
What is there prevents thee from being a god?

 

Written in the first century BC, these lines by the Greek poet Anacreon are the earliest recorded example of insect praise. Attributing god-like status to his singing friend, Anacreon recognises its difference from other life on Earth. In a later age he may have asked “what prevents thee from being a machine?”

When Sublime Frequencies released Tucker Martine’s album of insect field recordings, Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia in 2004, many listeners refused to believe that the glitchy, buzzing tones on the CD hadn’t originated in a laptop or a synthesiser. Conversely, anyone listening to David Tudor’s Rainforest for the first time might easily be persuaded that they were hearing actual field recordings from the Amazon jungle.

“Some hear bug music, some hear people music, all depends on your ears” wrote the 19th century Japanese poet Wâfu. This epigram opens David Rothenberg’s new book Bug Music, which explores this overlap between natural and synthetic, insect and human-made sound.

“If you like electronic music, you will like insect sounds,” says Rothenberg. “Bug music is electronic music, there is a deep, important connection here. People have loved insect sounds for many thousands of years. Prehistoric people, and Neanderthals, would probably have loved analogue synthesizers.”

Rothenberg himself is rhapsodic about insect sounds and, as with his previous investigations of bird and whale song, he set out to perform alongside a range of insect musicians: “the snowy tree cricket is one of the simplest and most beautiful… the cicadas among the most intense and gripping, while the treehoppers’ vibrational taps are among the most astonishingly complex.” All these collaborations can be heard on the Bug Music companion CD.

Bug Music encompasses an incredible breadth of scale, from the great – the mysterious 17-year incubation cycle of the Magicicada, a monstrous brood of which will hatch in New York State early this summer – to the very, very small – the molecular sounds recorded inside the brains of mosquitos at Clarkson University in New York. “I want readers and listeners to consider rhythm and noise at all possible scales of human awareness,” says Rothenberg, “from the microscopic to the macrocosmic.

„That’s why I found Curtis Roads‚ granular synthesis so compelling – the granular dimension of time is the secret of bug music. Dividing sounds into tiny ‚grains‘ can have huge implications for the re-conceiving of all human thought and our place in the universe… when I mentioned that to Roads he said, ‘don’t get too carried away!’”

Rothenberg encourages readers to open up to an expanded sense of what music can be, and from this he hopes we might encounter an expanded sense of our surroundings. The implicit message is that retuning oneself to think differently about music might be beneficial on multiple levels: to each of us individually, to humankind as a species and, perhaps, even to the planet as a whole.

“Listening to nature can be a gateway towards listening to experimental music, but listening to and enjoying experimental music can also be a gateway towards listening to the sounds of nature.”

Humankind’s ability to empathise with and understand the needs of other species is one of our greatest talents, and listening to them is just one part of that. “We know so little about the sensory world of other creatures,” says Rothenberg, “nature is still a giant book waiting to be opened, translated, and deciphered; or, if you see it as music, it can be listened to and interacted with.”

Bug Music: How Insects Gave us Rhythm and Noise is published by St Martin’s Press. More details on the book here, and on the CD here.

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Julien Héraud | improv sphere
Je n’avais déjà pas franchement apprécié le dernier duo Rothenberg/Scanner paru chez Monotype, alors autant le dire de suite, c’est pas avec ce solo que je vais commencer à aimer son travail. La démarche est intéressante, David Rothenberg a voulu ici produire un duo entre les insectes et sa musique, un duo censé mettre en avant les liens entre la production sonore des insectes et les productions sonores humaines, qu’elles soient rythmiques, mélodiques, ou noise. On en tend donc pas mal de samples d’insectes, d’oiseaux et du monde naturel de manière général, ainsi que ses habituelles clarinettes. Une musique douce, mélodieuse, où les mondes animal et humain sont évidemment en parfaite harmonie. Outre l’aspect très easy-listening que j’ai du mal à apprécier, c’est aussi la manière de trop plier les productions sonores naturelles aux intentions musicales que je ne trouve pas forcément très juste.

 

Une musique qui tend souvent vers de nombreux idiomes, entre musique électronique et world-jazz, entre free jazz et field-recordings, mais le tout de manière très édulcorée.
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