Tibor Szemzö - The Other Shore (1999 compi, rec. 1992-97)

Hungarian musician & composer Tibor Szemzö previously featured here with his Snapshot From The Island album; this three-track collection switches out the bucolic, mellow atmosphere for a more melancholy journey.

First up is the title track, building gradually as string phrases from Szemzö's Gordian Knot Company ensemble punctuate the silence.  Chanting voices and restrained percussion enter, then a little bass guitar, to which Szemzö will eventually add bass flute.  Meanwhile, extracts of a Buddhist treatise, Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, are recited in Japanese.  So far, so nicely mediative.

The second piece is Symultan, based around sampled voices from a Roma community and related field recordings, with a similar musical backing to the first track eventually taking shape.  It will be all the more affecting for those that understand the language - they're apparently talking about all that was lost to their community under fascism - but is still a striking work of very human melancholy without knowing the speech.  The album closes with Gull, an absolutely lovely work for string quartet and tabla.

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István Mártha, Sándor Bernáth, Endre Szkárosi - The Wind Rises (1987)

The Wind Rises (Electropleniar Sound Diary), or Támad A Szél - Hangnapló on its 1987 vinyl release by Hungaroton's jazz imprint Krém, was a bizarre collaborative project led by composer István Mártha.  Working with associates Sándor Bernáth and poet/sound artist Endre Szkárosi, as well as several other musicians, Mártha intended The Wind Rises to be the start of a multimedia project, out of which all that was completed was some video footage and this album.  So if the world was denied what could've been a Hungarian Twin Peaks, at least there's some fantastically odd music to listen to.

The album was eventually reissued by ReR Megacorp in 1998 with the cover above, and English track titles, lyrics and liner notes that helped non-Hungarian speakers to somewhat decipher what's going on.  What emerges is a strange narrative of the everyday existence of some timberyard workers in the village of Kapolcs, overlaid with folk singing (some of it seemingly recorded in the early 70s), bits of organ music, folk music, synths, avant-garde chamber music, skronking saxophones... you get the idea.  Tibor Szemző drops by to handle the wind instruments.  In a brief reminisce, Mártha describes the project as "an ex tempore exhibition containing sediments of feelings and documents, a mapping of fading connections with nature", perhaps as clear an explanation as can be found for this remarkable record.

Original LP cover

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Tibor Szemző - Snapshot From The Island (1987/98)

First album by Hungarian composer Tibor Szemző (b. 1955, Budapest), which drew together three of his works for flute and electronics.  The 24-minute title track is up first, with the echoing bass flute on its own before a loping rhythm track starts to underpin it.  There's a little oasis of calm about halfway through with just sonorous vocal sounds and ambient noise accompanying the flute reverberations, before the rhythm picks up again towards the end.

Water-Wonder for flutes and tape delay is next, and on the CD version the original 1986 recording appears to have been swapped out for a 1998 one, and gains an extra 2 minutes on the LP's 14 and a half.  I'd imagine this doesn't matter all that much what with it being the most straightfoward composed work on the album - in fact, it dates back to 1982, and was first recorded (in shortened form) for Szemző's Group 180 ensemble on their 1983 debut.  A couple of Group 180's releases showed their interest in Steve Reich's music, and you could perhaps think of Water-Wonder as a 'Flute Phase' of sorts.

That leaves Let's Go Out And Dance, a 1985 work written for "shadowplay" theatre - if you're of a certain age like me, this might immediately evoke images of The Dude's neighbour performing his interpretive dance piece, but musically it's another bucolic island snapshot like the first track.  A gently droning synth and quietly puttering rhythm track are the backing here for the absolutely gorgeous flute melodies - I think this might be my favourite of the three tracks.  This album sometimes draws comparisons to Florian Schneider's early flute work, had Kraftwerk started a decade later, but atmospherically I'd say it more evokes Can's Future Days in languid loveliness.  Recommended.

original LP cover

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