dk & the perfectly ordinary
Car Dew Treat Us
Spool Spurn 2
P.192 – track by Caroline Künzle
https://open.spotify.com/track/5QvCkDyI2BLnBDfmXCuHPi?si=fgNGCa4oSSOnXQV_NFXxEg&utm_source=copy-link&sci=spotify%3Acard-config%3A2XuEMtd2MfKUL7Z675cSEP
Image of page 192 of Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise, which inspired this track.
The complete composition, written between 1963 and 1967, consists of 193 pages of numbers, shapes, and symbols. Interpretation is left up to the performer.
Review of album, by Z. Buium in Point of Departure
Spool, the small Canadian label, produced more than 40 records in a decade-long run beginning in 1998. Directed by Vern Weber (in British Columbia) and Daniel Kernohan (in Ontario) the imprint was, among other things, the first to document Vancouver’s fertile turn-of-the-century improvised music scene, from cellist Peggy Lee and drummer Dylan van der Schyff’s debut (These Are Our Shoes, 1998) to the NOW Orchestra’s widely acclaimed work with George Lewis (The Shadowgraph Series: Compositions for Creative Orchestra, 2001).
Now Spool quietly returns, with a new series, Spurn, and a familiar set of aesthetics, be it the album design or the music itself. Car Dew Treat Us arrives with an extreme, nearly self-produced level of austerity – cardboard sleeve, scant credits, and, unless you poke around a little bit online, no explanation of what you’re about to hear.
You might need a bit of help – or at least I did – to figure out what’s going on in this 45-minute rendition of Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise, once described as “the Mount Everest of graphic scores.” The complete composition, written between 1963 and 1967, consists of 193 pages of numbers, shapes, and symbols. Interpretation is left up to the performer.
Here dk (Daniel Kernohan, the label’s prime mover in its second incarnation) and the perfectly ordinary (Allison Cameron, Rod Dubey, Lawrence Joseph) bring a huge palette into play: guitars, electronics, keyboards, voice, and – taking my cue from Cameron’s website, I’m guessing now – ukulele, banjo, mini amplifiers, radios, crackle boxes, cassette tapes, mini objects, and toys.
Ten pages from Treatise were randomly selected. One guest was added for each track, largely other Canadians from the Toronto and Montreal scenes. “Each musician interpreted their page(s) from the score alone, unable to hear what the other participants were playing,” Spool explains online. “The tracks were then assembled with start and stop times slightly altered and mixed down by dk.” Each piece is listed at four minutes and 33 seconds, presumably a nod to John Cage.
The 10 performances include fuzz and spoken-word epigrams, Blade Runner moods and sheet-metal fancies. Voice artist Paul Dutton is here (“p. 172”), as is Bay Area percussionist Gino Robair (“p. 16”), and Montreal-based sound artist, and longtime Liverpudlian, Vergil Sharkya (“p. 109”).
These short performances – vignettes? pieces? conversations? – are self-contained and then carefully built into the 46-minute event. Highlights include “p. 192” (with sound artist Caroline Künzle), a magnificent mixture of spoken word, ambient sounds, Baroque strings (real or reproduced?), and faraway marching bands. Or “p. 102” (with Al Margolis), which culminates in the kind of extreme ear-splitting you only expect in wartime. I had an excellent time following the score (it’s easily found online). Car Dew Treat Us is something to hear and to see. Take the time. Try listening both ways: with and without your eyes.
—Greg Buium
