A More Attractive Way by IST
Released by Mark Wastell and his label Confront recordings which is a fulcrum of interesting outputs within live electronics, improvised music and experimental sounds and is based in London.
The contents of the whole set is actually a collection of their live performances which took place between years of 1996 and 2000. A document of a different period in experimental free improvised music when musicians faced different challenges and set a bit different goals. In a way I feel a bit of nostalgic about that times as they have set an interesting direction towards what has been influencing the current flux of the improvised music.
What strikes me the most about this set is the emotional and intellectual temperature of the interaction between the musicians. It is never lukewarm and never goes below certain point. The textures that they generate and produce are refined and sophisticated and you can hear the example especially on the final disc where they interpret Stockhausen's "Intensität" - an intuitive and both highly well thought through and magically evolving as it develops.
IST's work is about nuances if you look at it from the perspective of deep listening. The whole script of each set is a narrative where the silence and the sound are interwoven - they play equal role with the density, pitch and the form that preparations take.
It is interesting also, bearing in mind that they have collaborated with other musicians, that the form of it is not a closed entity. It is what excellent music is supposed to be like: open to interpretations and influences and intrusions.
"A more attractive way" is a great introduction to where it all started and can act as a milestone in the work of separate musicians and their careers but most importantly it is an excellent collection of live recordings of a times which helped to embrace free-improvised music and to understand the core of it by a younger generation of musicians.
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