Name your album “Hocketus” and you’re pretty much guaranteed to spark some favorable interest. It registers with medieval-music aficionados, who know about the origins of the interlocking parts that define hocket as a style. And it really appeals to Louis Andriessen fans, who could probably subsist solely on his Hocketus and subsequent related works. Or maybe I’m just talking about myself.
Savant Flaneur is the Winnipeg-based duo of cellist Nathan Krahn and violinist Gage Salnikowski. There is a timeline in which such a string duo could offer mannered chamber music in the hocket tradition. This is not that timeline. Krahn and Salnikowski improvise with, against, around, over, and under a series of Max/MSP patches. The duo hints at hockets, more or less explicitly, but more as an idea than a strict musical form.
The compelling concept here, especially on the opening “INTERRUPTUS” and the title track, is improvisation of interlocking parts. I’m not sure either instrument ever plays a “melody” of more than a few notes. Sometimes it’s just one note at a time, egged on by the electronics. That’s how the album starts, and after experiencing such an unclassifiable sound, I dare you to listen to the first few seconds without buckling in for the full half-hour.
Equally jarring is the second track, “SUBLIMATE,” which opens with a microtonally-layered drone. The long tones are relatively short as drones go, but after the short-attention-span theater of the opener, it’s a dramatic shift. The listener can switch gears from wondering what the hell is happening to wondering what the hell kind of interval they’re playing.
The final track, “PROVOCATION,” is indeed that. It’s the most electronics-heavy piece on the set, perhaps Savant Flaneur’s vision of what happens when we start to lose control of the AIs. Presumably the duo is triggering the patches and perhaps sending their instruments through effects; besides that, the acoustic violin and cello are relegated to a strictly supporting role. After all, if we push hockets to their logical extreme, the tricky rhythms are probably better suited to computers than humans, anyway.
This ain’t background music, and it’s all the better for its full commitment to a shirt-grabbing sound. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and for experimentalists, what higher praise is there?
