Belleli, Avi: Strawberry Cream And Gunpowder

Music for dance, ostensibly about the personal, interior effects of Terror recorded live during performance. So, starting there, the sound itself is rather thin, offhanded – one assumes – deliberately lo-res. The music tends to favor a sort of mono-minded stubbornness which may be an affecting metaphor for terror and then again may oversimplify the matter – without resorting to contrasts or artificial drama. "S.C.G.P. shmama" runs to fourteen minutes and is mostly some lightly treated audio derived from what sounds like dragging a pick across some guitar strings. But the bigger question raised is how this approach addresses its topic, and if dance and music are in fact the best medium for articulating a point of view of the complexities inherent in what motivates terrorism and how those motivations play into individual consciousness. Given the lack of specific (rather than the rich manures of that which is only inferred or only overt) narrative capacity in instrumental music, the best we can hope for are gestures, even the gestures of the dancers so obviously missing from this recording, unless we fall back on romantic-era associations that remain so subjective any listener can and probably will end up with any self-serving conclusion. In other words, the kind of thinking that gets us the kind of mess this work is intended to address. The effort deserves respect, but the effort needs to respect its subject by displaying some measure of greater clarity and insight.

Track Listing
1) S.C.G.P. shmama
2) S.C.G.P. 2nd texture
3) S.C.G.P. dogs
4) S.C.G.P. comics
5) S.C.G.P. A and G
6) S.C.G.P. shahid
7) S.C.G.P. hands up
8) B.A.R.E.S.I

Added: May 2nd 2007
Reviewer: Kerry Leimer
Score:
Related Link: Avi Belleli Website
Hits: 2647
Language: english

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