Meredith Monk might be one of America’s most fascinating composers, but the additional roles that she has created for herself – that of singer, dancer, choreographer, film-maker and theatre director – have sometimes left her compositional skills overlooked. While her fellow New York loft-dwelling minimalists such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich often find their work being performed by modern ensembles, Monk’s compositions seem tied to her own unique performances of them. Specifically it’s the way in which she embraces the weird irregularities of the human voice – the croaks, clicks, breaths, hiccups and howls that most singers try hard to suppress – and integrates them into her work, slipping in elements of comically absurd Dadaist sound poetry. In some ways it’s her methodology that has survived as an influence (on Björk, in particular) rather than her actual writing.
Monk is now 77 and appears to be undergoing a gradual process of relinquishing control over her compositions. She sings a bit on her new album Memory Game, but her vocal idiosyncrasies are largely delegated to her trusted Vocal Ensemble (Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin). The main draw, however, is hearing how New York chamber outfit Bang on a Can All-Stars have reorchestrated nine pieces from Monk’s varied theatrical productions since the early 1980s. Gamemaster’s Song, a stompy, propulsive duet for piano and vocals from 1983, is reworked into a compelling piece of spiky post-punk, using a percussive synth riff and a counterpoint bassline. Memory Song sees Monk and her vocalists chirruping a series of random memories in English and German until they resemble birdsong, accompanied by a glistening ostinato phrase played on a Casiotone and lushly orchestrated with strings, woodwind and guitar. But it’s Waltz in 5s, from 1996, that best suggests how Monk’s music might thrive without Monk. It’s a haunting, wordless aria sung over a jerky 5/4 vamp, which simultaneously suggests a neolithic folk lament and a space-age psalm beamed in from another planet.
• Released 27 March.
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This mix of the prehistoric and the futuristic is also evident on Different Geographies, the latest LP by all-female London string-and-synth quartet Collectress. They actually recall Meredith Monk on the fractured poetry of She Must Shut Her Eyes; sound like an Edwardian Kraftwerk on Mauswerk; and hint at the trippy, pastoral folk of Linda Perhacs on Harbour.
Ian William Craig is an operatically trained singer who, like Arthur Russell, has managed to find a demotic vehicle for his classical chops. Red Sun Through Smoke, written as forest fires encircled his home town in British Columbia, Canada, is a compelling suite of warped modern-day hymns, backed only by a clunky upright piano and recorded on a four-track tape recorder, which he has manipulated to create ghostly effects.
