Interventions
(Fringecore) Used CD $5.00
The stunning compendium of the multi-instrumentalist’s amassed knowledge released in 2000 on a Belgian label (later reissued on Young God). “Whether Coulter plays violins, saxophones, the didgeridoo, ukulele, or singing, Intervention sounds as if it were from another world, where musical languages are interchangeable and complimentary rather than codified and restrictive….” On “Kinsnow Orchestra,” the former member of The Pogues and Test Dept. plays jew’s harp, krar, and one-string fiddle, and is accompanied by a sheet-like soundscape by Palix, a double bass, and guitar. “There is an Indian raga feel to the piece, but it has no time signature; it’s all microtones strung together in rows. On ‘How Can I Love Thee?’ Coulter’s soprano saxophone accompanies an over-the-phone reading by Iain Morris of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem of the same name. Its darker-than-night feel gives the impression of a suicide note being left on an answering machine. When Coulter does a vocal in the tradition of the Tuvans and Tibetans meeting in the Himalayas while using a plectra violin and a piano for sonic architecture, it doesn’t tower above you, it floats through your body, leaving a longing for the sacred with the taste of the profane on your skin…. ‘Harmonik’ … is a dance tune created and executed in just intonation with Ghedalia Tazartes on vocal and accordion, with overtones from the sawing of the violin in its high register, just behind its own drone and the accordion pulsing with the organic percussion the same series of chords over and over again. The effect is not just hypnotic. It’s entrancing.” Phil Minton, Marc Ribot, and Steve Naïve “appear on the album’s astonishing closer, ‘Polaroids,’ a composition of such dynamic and textural wealth and modal invention it appears to defy musical logic while sounding so far inside Western musical systems as to be inherent in their origins.”