Konnekt – 1st February 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s perhaps an understatement that Charlemagne Palestine’s body of work is immense, and the range of artists he’s collaborated with quire staggering. Active since the early 70s, it’s likely impossible to give a brief summary of his career or output, and when approaching a work such as this, I find it easier to place career context to one side and evaluate it on its own merits. It may be an admission of failure, a confession to a limited knowledge, but the debates over how a release sits in relation to the other forty or so albums are the place of fan forums.
However, in keeping with his habit of adding many repeated letterssssss at the end of words and songgggggggg titlesssss, Beyondddddd The Notessssss, his collaboration with Seppe Gebruers bears a rather daft titleeeee, of which I shall make no more, other than to observe that this suitably sparse, piano-led work does indeed take the listener beyond the notes as it promises.
Over time, I’ve become quite drawn to this type of album, which seems to proliferate in experimental circles, whereby an LP – released on vinyl, too – will contain just two or three tracks, and the compositions seem to be arranged around the fact that each side has the capacity for around twenty minutes of audio. I suppose it’s because I grew up in the 80s, and was raised on vinyl as the dominant format, but in the world of the mainstream, where an album – approximately forty minutes in duration – would consist of ten, or perhaps nine songs, most of which were three or four minutes in length, and could be lifted as a radio-playable single. In the late 80s and 90s, the 12” would provide longer edits of singles, often aimed at clubs, but discovering the two-track album was a revelation, in that it seemed like a revolution of form. I was unfamiliar with the works of Tangerine Dream, Yes, or Pink Floyd beyond their singles at this time, because… well, because.
Side one is occupied by the twenty-one minute ‘Gotcha I’, a sparse composition where discord dominates to render an uncomfortable listening experience. It feel like semi-random plonking on an out of tune piano. In pinks and pings, plongs and tinkles with no time sequence, no key, and no clear sense of form. It simply is. Notes clash and collide, ripple and rush against one another, sometimes holding back, hanging in suspense. In some respects, it bears a resemblance to jazz improv pieces – and perhaps not entirely surprisingly: this album features two pianists ‘passion for unusual tunings and the playing of multiple pianos’. The result of the collaboration is four pianos, played simultaneously, with each piano tuned in a rather less than conventional way.
It would perhaps be beguiling if it wasn’t so far removed from anything we’ve been accustomed to recognising as melodic. But as it is… everything simply sounds wrong. Atonal, uncomfortable, off-key and off-kilter. The effect is quite brain-bending, because everything feels warped, out of step, uncoordinated. It isn’t, of course: it’s simply how our minds have been programmed and attenuated to conventional note sequences and melodies, and Beyondddddd The Notessssss trashes everything with a joyful abandon. Once you come to accept this, and to reattenuate your own listening to accommodate this strangeness, which offsets the balance, sets one lurching and feeling bewildered, it becomes somewhat easier to accept.
‘Gotcha II’ commences side two where ‘Gotcha I’ / side one leaves off, but tumbles slowly into altogether more spartan territory. Each note hangs. There are moments of silence. Deep, rumbling, stomping piano arrives, dinosaur-like. It’s primitive, but strangely magnificent, carrying as it does a simplicity which is rare. And this simplicity brings with it a sort of honesty. I’m fumbling for words, here, for reasons which aren’t even readily explainable. Towards the end, notes cascade and tumble over one another, culminating in a frenzy of clattering, broken notes, and it’s bewildering.
Bewildering is perhaps the most apposite description of Beyondddddd The Notessssss. The title track, which draws the curtain with a five-minute finale, offers something approaching minimal jazz – with the emphasis on minimal. And jazz.
Beyondddddd The Notessssss goes way beyond the notes, and, indeed, way beyond the rational.
AA
Aural Aggravation 