Keith Rowe - Absence (Erstwhile Records, 2021)

Keith Rowe - Absence (Erstwhile Records, 2021)

It probably doesn't come as a surprise to many fans that 81-year-old improviser Keith Rowe has finally publicly hung up the guitar. It probably doesn't come as a surprise either that his final solo performance with one was brilliant. As a member of the genre-founding improvisation ensemble AMM in the 1960s he began to develop a performative language of gestures that was entirely new to his instrument. Through 50 years of gradual change, enhancement and refinement, the artist successfully stayed ahead of the curve by laying the instrument on a table and implementing surprisingly simple electroacoustics – not just to abstract the guitar's sounds necessarily, but to bring out what is hidden. If his recent magnum opus, The Room Extended, is evidence of anything it's that the aesthetic and the emotional connection that runs between Keith Rowe and his guitar is something that goes much deeper than it does with most other guitarists.

Absence, however, does not start (or end) with guitar, but the shrill swipe of a contact microphone along an ambiguous texture – perhaps the guitar itself. The contact microphones rustle for quite a while before the guitar's distinctive, pitched static begins to become audible. A first, quick swipe along a guitar string is directly followed by another new device: a radio playing a pop song, which is stubbornly rushed away by another swipe of the guitar – it is clear which of these elements is supporting which. For the next several minutes the restrained guitar is given center stage while elements of popular culture enter and evaporate from the mix, hidden beneath fumbling statics and demanding performances. Although at 7:43 Keith can be heard mimicking the radio's melody, I think it would be a stretch to say that any of these songs are especially accepted by the artist, or even respected.

About 12 minutes into the performance things change though. In the artist's own words:

"I want to share with you a recording of that 33 mins solo from Bern before it too departs for the dustbin. An important moment in the solo is at 12:10 thru 12:21 where the Parkinson's tremor frequency (around 300bpm) can be heard, and it's around this moment I decide not to solo again."

During those 11 seconds a repetitive bumping that could be mistaken for an electric fan pressed to a guitar string can clearly be heard. A compelling moment indeed, but I think the album's most interesting moments are actually what's yet to come… although at first it's not much. Devices already prepared continue to sound, and Keith awkwardly stabs in with his radio, only to pull it right back. To my ear, this half-minute is one of the most awkward moments to ever appear on a Keith Rowe release – the performer seems completely lost in his thoughts. It's as if we can hear him considering and deciding upon his partial retirement in real time.

It's understandable that this revelation may have caused some confusion or delay within the performer. What he just experienced, and what we just heard, in my interpretation, was a massive question and shift of identity. The earlier mentioned connection between performer and instrument was severed, and the language that he spent so long to evolve is now dissipating. Hearing just this questionable sounds of clicking tones, the guitarist has lost his guitar, his identity.

Keith doesn't take long to begin his search for new identity though, soon reaching for his radios and turning to the air waves. He finds foreign voices and pop songs, not quite what he was hoping for, but he settles on a funk song until tiring of it too. In the meantime, he amplifies the music and lets it descend into an obtrusive noise only to cut it away entirely and settle back again into his clicking tones, seemingly bitter about his findings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, after failing to find something to identify with, it's not long until the guitarist identity re-emerges to gradually push his experienced instrumental expressionism into nuanced catharsis.

During this sustained, elevated climax, from 20:10 thru 20:16, the Parkinson's tremor frequency can again be heard. Like before it acts as an embarrassing, disruptive force resulting in a retreat into the radio, but this time it all feels orchestrated. Keith uses the opportunity to craft a small, borrowed minuet that looks outwards beyond the performer, ultimately working as a mid-climax breather before devolving and amplifying back into the same gripping catharsis which abstractly pushes far beyond words, raising the question of if true vulgarity lies in the outside world's banal music or within this spirited, indulgent eruption of self – a reasonable answer may even be to doubt vulgarity's existence. After getting it all out of his system, he settles down with his radios for the final several minutes of the performance, resulting in a provocative coda and perhaps the album's most emotionally stirring moments.

Again, it's mostly pop music and foreign voices, but this time it's shown a bit more respect. It's given time and clarity. The search for identity continues, soon to become all that's left. Eventually he finds a track which seems to fit: Quantrells' 1972 soul single Can't Let You Break My Heart. Various stabs and interjections cut through it in a manner similar to how the radio once cut through the guitar, but once the track ends and turns to something more contemporary, it fades out in favour of classical music.

This final sample is given far more clarity than anything we've heard come from his radios so far, and perhaps more significance than any other sample in his whole recorded career – it's played for two minutes, uninterrupted and unprocessed. I don't know the name of the composer or the title, but Keith probably does (*), even if it's just something he found on the radio. He loves this stuff, as fans of his career should know by now. It makes sense that this is the sample that's stuck with him, that he's allowed it to be the final thing that the listener hears before ending his performance. Much more than the pop songs being heard earlier, this is the music that makes sense to Rowe – in this music, even without his guitar, he still has an identity (if you're unconvinced, I recommend hearing his recent short piece, An Assemblage / Construct for 45 Voices).

Similar to how I've imagined Keith, I can't much identify with these pop songs. I find them boring and they don't leave a significant impact on me. This classical music doesn't do much for me either though, I'll admit. Keith's performance, however, is something I can get my head around – how he has turned his instruments into recipes for abstract sound and turned those sounds into improvised expression is something that appeals to me and moves me in a fundamental, visceral way. One of the most exciting things in Keith's music, and particularly in this final live guitar performance, is how these sampled musics get spun into ready-made sounds, contrasted elements of his inexhaustible self-expressionism – placing them into a context where their most essential qualities, the sound and the emotion, can be abstractly but directly understood and appreciated as discreet components of this enormously captivating electroacoustic mush.

On that note, I'd like to end this review with a list by the artist which can be found in Brian Olewnick's 2018 biography of the artist. It is titled "Why I use the radio: Found Object"

"Unpredictable content / Fixed to a time and place / Part of a global culture and at the same time a local culture / Part of the process of shifting the object from utilitarian to the aesthetic / Allows vulgar materials to be incorporated into the performance / Difficult to determine whether it elevates, degenerates or celebrates the sources of materials / Creativity at the point of juxtaposition / Integration of other media / Helps to produce a layered sensation / Independent / Perpetual variation / Modular / Reproduces certain aspects of daily life / Synthetic / Challenges the notion of authority that came from technique / Adds to the polyphony of timbre / Has its own unique texture / A question of reality and a question of art: the artistic fact / Engages in imitation / Replaces the exterior contribution of the composer in some aspects / Environment and noise / Provides melody for the guitar / Lack of uniqueness in contribution / Helps with the act of music making, or organizing in front of you / Changes the perceptions of the performance"

(*) - Keith did know! It was the third movement of Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 80 in D minor, and he even thinks he's found the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJEeu7r6GwA (movement begins at 13:32)

Absence can be purchased digitally or on CD through Erstwhile Record's official website or Bandcamp:

https://www.erstwhilerecords.com/store/p268/Keith_Rowe_-_Absence_%28CD%29_%2AJune_11.html

https://erstwhilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/absence