Jason Kahn // Circle

Editions 008

Jason Kahn // voice, resonator guitar

Recorded June 12, 2018 in Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich.
Mixed and mastered July 25 - August 25, 2018.

Cover photo taken from a video made in concert on May 24, 2018 by Jim Strong at Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia.

Thanks to Patrick Huber for letting me spend an evening in Walcheturm to record.


These recordings were made shortly after returning home from a 15-show tour across the U.S. and Canada, though I’d been working on this material for some time prior to the tour. Although the pieces on this release are all improvised, the ideas therein were realized more fully over the course of the tour. I find that improvising can only really develop with an audience, and being able to test this material in front of a different crowd of people practically every night for over two weeks pushed my ideas to another level of expression.

Guitar was actually my first instrument, a few years prior to beginning music in earnest on drum set. Returning to the guitar after all these years is in a sense coming full circle for me over my musical lifetime of forty years. The title of the release hints at this journey but also at the structure of the pieces, which circle around themselves, weaving around a central idea and sonic material.

These pieces were recorded by myself over the course of an evening, alone in a large, resonant room in Zürich. I approached the recording session as if I were playing a concert before an audience. I started a piece and saw it through to its end. By the end of the evening, I had made many more recordings than on the final release here. The last piece on the release was in fact the last piece of the evening. I tuned down the guitar another couple of steps and listened for the night.

I imagine that many people who’ve followed my work over the years might be puzzled by the directions I’ve taken – from drum set, electronics, environmental recording, graphical scores, installations with text and sound, solo extended voice and now guitar. For me, there is a continuity to what I’m doing and each new development leads me on to the next, as contrary as it might seem to what has come before. And this is also to say that what has come before hasn’t been abandoned. Like the pieces on this release I feel myself circling around recurring ideas and approaches, with each orbit picking up new material and concepts along the way. For me there is no destination, just points along the way.

Jason Kahn
Zürich, 2018

jasonkahn.net/editions

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Reviews:

In keeping with the interest in vocal improvisation expressed in recent years – initially concretized on 2015’s Songline – Jason Kahn armed himself with a resonator guitar and recorded a good amount of solo pieces inside Zurich’s Kunstraum Walcheturm, a venue known for its resonant qualities. No spectators were present, but Kahn was focusing on the emotional core of the matter exactly as he would in concert.
Although convinced that “improvisation can only develop with an audience” (for the record, this writer thinks the opposite is true), Kahn managed to strike an uncommon balance between refined forms and uttered viscerality. The approach on the instrument – reportedly the first he ever played, well before the electronic/percussive ventures that made him renowned – is that of a modern bluesman: the fingers’ savvy on the strings is clearly felt, both in the stronger passages and when a higher degree of understatedness is involved.

The voice finds attractive parallelisms with the guitar in the sliding interstices that link the tonal centres (hypothetical or real), enhancing our participation with a compound of unrepressed primordial energies and tense insightfulness. Kahn does look for guide lights and sweeter spots as we all do during adversity; however, to achieve the aim he shows no fear whatsoever in treading seriously uncomfortable paths. Occasionally, he appears to suffer excruciatingly while singing; in other tracks, the imageries evoked project out-and-out wordless rituals. In any circumstance, not a single minute is deprived of conspicuous events.

Ultimately, time is needed to sponge up what Kahn tried to transfer; the hours spent within this album are going to be repaid in full. As he writes in the introductory notes, “for me there is no destination, just points along the way”. We’re happy to trek in the company of a seeker who’s never afraid of disclosing his nakedness.
>Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, 11.2018


Voice and resonator guitar from the prolific US-born Zürich-dweller. But if you’re expecting something like Charlie Parr, you should probably look away now. Neither is this project bathed in sepia-toned cod-“authenticity”, thankfully. For those not familiar with Kahn’s activities over the last twenty years or so, his recorded output has most often been concerned with field recordings and associated recording techniques. He began his music career as a drummer, spent many years practicing improvisation and making field recordings while simultaneously developing his art practice, but more recently has toured using analogue synthesiser, or voice. (STOP PRESS! I’ve just seen a short film on social media promoting Jason’s current duo with guitarist Beat Keller wherein Jason is perched behind a drum kit! You heard it here first!) I attended a recent duo performance with Jason in vocal-only mode in collaboration with master percussionist Christian Wolfarth last year which was absolutely breathtaking, if you’ll excuse the pun.

“Circle_1” is cranking away nicely until at 7 and a half minutes, Kahn’s voice begins to sound like static. It’s unique, I think, in the field of vocal improvisors; at least I’ve not heard anything quite like it before. It’s my favourite sound Kahn makes, I think. On “Circle_2”, his vocal shifts pitch and key; exploring microtones. Quieter, beautiful. For me, the beginning of “Circle_3” creates a desolate atmosphere not unlike Nico’s Desertshore. In mood - not sound or instrumentation, but mood. This may or may not intend to denote a similar kind of disconnection or disunity with ones surrounding or situation.

On “Circle_4”, “Circle_5” and “Circle_6” I particularly noticed that Kahn plays his Resonator guitar with a slide. Probably these pieces are the nearest to a “traditional” approach; or at least, the tradition can be heard in Kahn’s playing. A sharecropper’s blues lament abstracted through the 21st century mind-set prism. You could almost say it could be an emotional tribute to musicians like Tampa Red and Son House. “Circle_6” is actually the last piece of recording from this session at Zürich’s Kunstraum Walcheturm arts space. Kahn utilises the natural reverb of the hall with his skilful microphone placement really nicely.

Kahn talks about Circle in this way: “…Guitar was actually my first instrument, a few years prior to beginning music in earnest on drum set. Returning to the guitar after all these years is in a sense coming full circle for me over my musical lifetime of forty years.”

All six tracks have a duration of between nine and ten minutes, so at nearly an hour of material, there’s plenty to get immersed in. Kahn is as rigorously experimental, perhaps searching is a better word, as is usual on Circles so it’s best to get comfortable and treat this album as an intimate concert in your own front room. I would have liked to set this album in some kind of context and mention certain other experimental musicians known for utilizing Resonator guitar. But outside of Sherry Ostapovich, whose superb album The Red Thumb was released under the name Musicforone back in 2008, there aren’t many other avant-resonatorists, at least that I’m aware of. BJ Cole has used one, I’m led to believe, when he isn’t playing pedal steel. So, it seems here, Jason Kahn is currently working in a very small field. Not a bad place to be. As with all of Kahn’s endeavours, this one rewards careful listening.
>Paul Kimasia Morgan, Honest Music For Dishonest Times, 10.201


Kahn previously released an album with the same title (Celadon, 2009). Not only is this quite different from that one, it's (as near a I can determine), very different from anything else he's put out. I should qualify that as Kahn has issued a large amount of material and, though I've heard a great deal of it over the years, I'm not a completist but we'll just say that, on the surface, we're a long way from the rotating metals, etc. from the past. Here it's just guitar and voice and, on first blush, a slightly more subdued Keiji Haino comes to mind. The guitar work is a kind of abstracted blues form (it was Kahn's first instrument), played in very much his own style though perhaps guitarists from Fahey to Tetuzi Akiyama might drift into the listener's mind, while the voice ranges from strangulated cries, to soft moans to evocations of Robbie Basho. Whether the works, reasonably similar, quite justify the hour of the disc is open to question, but I largely enjoyed it and appreciate Kahn's willingness to venture out on this particular limb. Curious to see how long-time listeners deal with it.
>Brian Olewnick, Just Outside, 9.2018