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Recorded with The Wordless Music Orchestra and The Young New York City Ensemble, Central Market revises 20th century classical music with analogue wit. Opening Bell starts with fuzzes and a piano, progressing via stabs of horns and electronic birdsong into the kind of loony melodic experimentation associated with Battles. On The Duck and the Butcher, a persistent quack engages in an intricate dialogue with percussion, a harp, and a viola. The effect is unexpectedly delicate. Platinum, the ten-minute centrepiece, combines alarming brass blares, racing drums, agitated strings and happy whistles – it sounds like Leonard Bernstein scoring a Disney film.
One of Braxton’s key influences is Igor Stravinsky’s 1917 Song of the Nightingale. The post-impressionist composer’s The Rite of Spring famously sparked near riots because of its unheard-of combination of dissonance, atonality and repetition, and Bernstein’s recording of it is well known. Everywhere in Central Market, peculiar belches sit beside big brass statements, and technically intricate passages are interrupted by dramatic surprises. Braxton’s father’s defiance, as well as his own influences (including Philip Glass and Karlheinz Stockhausen), act as tangible forerunners to this brave fusion of the mechanical and the organic.
Though it pursues futurism, Central Market actually gazes backwards in time through its maker’s personal musical lineage. Furthermore, all the elements that were associated with primitivism in Stravinsky’s work – the tributes to birdsong and the circular, cacophonous evocations of the cycles of nature – are put through post-rock and electronic filters. These technological innervations create an impression of the comic and carnivalesque as much as of the future post-Stravinsky, or post-Bernstein recording Stravinsky; electronics primitivise the work even more.
Central Market is delightful, and what Stravinksy, Bernstein and Anthony Braxton all have in common is their popularising of the classical. In this respect, Tyondai Braxton’s achievements here are true to their inheritance, and this album deserves to sell. --Melissa Bradshaw
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Customer Reviews
My sister asked what the hell i was listening to and someone else commented that it was like the planet of the apes. So obviously not for those with conservative tastes.
Favourite track: The Duck and the Butcher
Tyondai Braxton is probably better known currently as the lead "singer," and multi-instrumentalist, for Battles. When I ripped this CD, my computer software labeled it as "Classical," probably meaning this is considered, or wanting to be considered, more high-brow. But you can tell Braxton never takes it that seriously - someone else must be responsible for that.
Battles fans may miss the drumming (we'll call what's in here "percussion," to keep with the high-brow theme). And John Adams might sue. But everybody else should be very pleased.
Braxton leads an ensemble that is mainly percussion and electronics, but also strings, and a kazoo is prominent for a lot of it. His weird singy-voice-manipulating thing shows up on most of the tracks, but it's just another instrument.
What comes out is very dramatic, cinematic - I would not be surprised to see Braxton show up with an orchestra in the near future.
The best attribute is that it's very lighthearted, whimsical. He's having a lot of fun.
He has won well-deserved praise from Bjork for the effort, and fans of the latter would definitely do well to pick this up. I bet Frank Zappa would give it two thumbs up, too. If you want a quick taste of the album, listen to about 30 seconds of Uffe's Woodshop - that would be the most representative taste of what you'll get.
And listening, I concur with John Jon's review comparing it to Zappa: late Zappa. The electronic constructions and weird timing sculptures remind of Master Frank's synclevier experiments such as Jazz From Hell and Civilization Phase 3. Purposely ramshackle houses of rhythms, counter-rhythms and noise monsters, all taking full advantage of modern electronic perfection.
Most bands use technology to make music sound trendy or to make the same music they could play on guitars in their garage. Guys like Zappa and Braxton use technology to make music human hands can't, and that puts music like Central Market in a whole other world
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