Michael Pisaro / Barry Chabala - black, white, red, green, blue (voyelles) (wm17)

'black, white, red, green, blue (voyelles) (wm17)' is Michael Pisaro and Barry Chabala's new cassette tape. Side A is Barry Chabala's solo electric guitar playing Pisaro's score "black, white, red, green, blue", which was composed in 2004, and Side B is a remix version in which Pisaro added tape hiss samples and sine tones over the same Chabala's solo guitar recording that is on Side A. In this score, the structure and all the pitches are given, but the precise timing and the details of the guitar sound are left open. The title "black, white, red, green, blue" is quoted from the first line of Rimbaud's poem "Voyelles". This was the first recording of Michael Pisaro's that I was exposed to, and I found myself instantly fascinated with his music when I heard these pieces for the first time.

■Side A: black, white, red, green, blue (2004) 　　1:00:04

• Barry Chabala (electric guitar / recording engineer)

In the first part, soft and round guitar sounds are thrown one by one after a fixed interval, and create a gentle ripple of harmony in the silence every time a sound is added. The resonance of each sound gradually increases the serene atmosphere of the music, like the solemn sound of a temple bell. The volume and expression of each sound is slightly different, but the calmness is the same.

In the next part, a faint sound of guitar emerges one by one after 30 seconds silence, and then softly dissolves into a silence again. Each sound has a different tone and volume. In each moment when the last afterglow of resonance dissolves into the complete silence, the air is filled with pure white serenity.

In the third part, a vivid and dynamic guitar sound is thrown with a solid stroke, one by one with different tones and strength at each time. The sudden change of the dynamics of guitar sounds gives stereoscopic dimensions to the music, and draws back the listeners to the front from a far distance. In the fourth part, a bleary guitar sound appears, and travels slowly in an elliptical path and returns like a boomerang. The repetitive move of the guitar sound, which is actually the gradual change of volume, creates a hypnotic ambience – which may feel like slowly wandering into a subconscious realm. Immersion in the music at this point affects the normal sense of time, elongating it. In the final part, the same chord of the first part is played with soft strums, with a long interval of silence, and spreads a wave of dreamy tones near the end of the piece.

Throughout this music, the proximity of silence and sounds increases gradually while the guitar sounds cross over the silence. Whether the sound is solid or faint, it always contains a hint of silence. And even when sounds are not presented, you may feel as if your ears were still hearing 'something' in the silence.

Barry Chabala's guitar was beautifully matched to this piece. Chabala rendered modest and introspective guitar sounds, which filled the whole music with a solemn and profound beauty. His sensitivity to create such delicate sounds with an electric guitar is incredible. With a thoughtfulness of rhyming words in a poem, Chabala delivered each sound into the silence without losing its pureness, while sustaining the serenity as if he is becoming a part of the silence. Along with Greg Stuart, Barry Chabala is one of the rare musicians who understand the subtle nuances of Pisaro's compositions at the deepest level and can perform them with amazing sensitivity.

■Side B： voyelles (2009)　 1:00:20

• Barry Chabala (electric guitar / recording engineer)
• Michael Pisaro (sine tones, samples, mixing and mastering)

In this remix version, Pisaro added samples of various hiss noises, which he collected from the unused ends of old tapes, as multiple layers of straight and filtered tape hiss besides sine tones. Pisaro finds an amazingly wide range of possibilities within the tape hiss - from amplified heavy bass to almost inaudible subtle sound - evoking various images like a metallic noise of an airplane, or a dry wind blowing through a cave, or the gentle sound of falling rain.

Pisaro's delicate insertions of samples and sine tones in this remix version is fantastic - he captured subtle textures and waves that may potentially exist in the silence, and expressed them expertly with the hiss noises (which we normally hear as something always existing next to the silence) and his sine tones. Pisaro's sounds never interfere with the introspective atmosphere of Chabala's guitar sounds. The serenity of Chabala's guitar solo version becomes even more emphasized with the addition of Pisaro's samples and sine tones, giving deeper and more expressive impressions to Chabala's guitar.

The subtle changes of sample sounds and sine tones are extremely delicate, sometimes almost imperceptible. The proximity of sounds and silence is so strong here that you may start thinking - if inaudible particles of sounds in the silence are picked out and amplified, they may sound like this.

In spite of the minimal nature and simplicity of the music, I have never gotten tired of listening to either version however many times I play it. Just like Rimbaud expressed different visual images of colors evoked from vowel sounds in his poem, Pisaro and Chabala brought out memorable images of colors and lights with different textures by using sounds - some of them emerge like dim lights of different colors, some of them sparkle like intense lights of vivid colors.

Silence exists naturally in Pisaro's music like a part of breathing, without an oppressive or strained atmosphere. This is a kind of silence that can coexist with sounds peacefully, easily admitting and welcoming environmental noises. When I was listening to Pisaro and Chabala's duo guitar live concert in Brooklyn in January, I felt the same way. During the performance, the room was filled with a dense silence where even a faint noise could be clearly caught by ears, but it did not make the environmental noises sound like an unwelcome distraction - even the noise of a train passing by outside or muffled footsteps of people stomping upstairs. I remember that those environmental noises were somewhat comfortably fusing with the silences of their music. Considering that environmental noises tend to feel uncomfortable and disturbing at most quiet concerts with long silences like this, it was a little surprising.

Sometimes I see some music criticism in which the silence that Japanese musicians like Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura and Taku Sugimoto use in their music is described as the state of Zen, but I always doubt it. The silence of Sachiko M and Toshimaru Nakamura is deeply connected with their serious seeking of identities. When they play music, they seem to be trying to reach their roots of existence by digging deep inside their selves, perhaps in order to connect with the universe ultimately. Because of the pureness and sincerity of the attitude, that extremely intense silence must be born. Meanwhile, Taku Sugimoto's silence seems to be connected with his strong statements like his adhesion, objection, sense of crisis and antithesis toward music and silence, perhaps as well as reconfirmation of his identity. His silence always contains a sharp edge to cut through anything about to be settled in the music comfortably. In a way, these three musicians’ silences are deeply rooted with their personal pursuits. Another well-known musician who is closely identified with silence is Radu Malfatti. His use of silence seems to be connected with his strong expression of his inner self, but at the same time, he connects to the universal silence from a neutral, egoless state. These apparently-opposing factors coexist in Malfatti's silences, and impart a complicated and unique nature to his music.

Michael Pisaro's silences are different from any of the above. Pisaro seems to connect sounds - not only in the music, but also environmental noises - and silence to listeners in the most natural and simplest way as a transparent medium, rather than expressing his own ego through the silence. This transparent nature as a medium that is completely free from ego seems to be a crucial characteristic of Pisaro's music. (This impression of a ‘transparent medium’ seems to be somewhat in common with the atmosphere of Haruki Murakami's writing.) In Pisaro's music, sounds and silence are not opposed to each other - sound contains silence, silence contains sounds. In a way, this approach might be the closest to the state of Zen that I am aware of. This might be the reason why I feel I can keep my calm state of mind of being immersed in the silence, even while in the middle of Pisaro's music.

As well as the essence of poems and art works, the essence of music naturally exists in the universe (or in the air around you) without actual shapes, until someone perceives the essence and gives a certain form to it - as a poem, as an art work or as music. Michael Pisaro is one of the rare composers and musicians in the contemporary music world who can perceive the slightest hint of this essence in the silence, handling it delicately without losing its subtlety, and let the music be born in its most simplest and purest form.