Rafał Zapała (b. 1975)
Futility
No Meaning Detected, for violin and electronics (2018)
Introverts’ Collective, for ensemble, electronics and mobile controllers (2021)
Judge Me Again, for flute and live electronics (2018)
Futility, for ensemble, electronics and mobile controllers (2020)
Scrolling to Zero, for keyboards and electronics (2018)
Kamil Staniczek (violin), Ania Karpowicz (flute, alto flute), Wojciech Błażejczyk (live electronics)
Hashtag Ensemble/Liliana Krych (conductor, Philips Philicordia)
rec. 2023, Warsaw, Poland
Kairos 0022036KAI [63]
Let’s start 2025 as we mean to go on by considering Futility. This aptly named confection, at this point in time, probably gets closer to encapsulating the conflicted nature of our individual and collective experience as music lovers, concertgoers, consumers and not least as earthlings than any other piece of art we are likely to encounter during this or any other year.
Regular readers may be aware that I review a lot of discs on Kairos, a label of uncommon distinction which seeks to promote contemporary art music in all its glorious variety, warts and all, from all over the globe. Whilst I certainly don’t approve of everything I hear on the label, I strive hard to describe and justify my perceptions as honestly and helpfully as possible. This task is often made more challenging by what I see as a critical need to unravel the frequently complex concepts, conceits and philosophies which underpin the sounds. In this respect, one comes to rely heavily upon the documentation which Kairos provide. On some occasions this can be massively compromised by English translations which sometims prove to be approximate at best. I do not blame the translators here: the presentations often come with very specific technical and artistic jargon unique to particular composers’ credos which utterly defies meaningful translation. I am pleased to reveal therefore that one of the delights of the present release is the lucidity, concision and elegance of the booklet note. Great credit is due to its authors, the Polish composer Rafał Zapała himself, Monika Pasiecznik, and her translator Katja Heldt who has rendered the original Polish into perfectly digestible English. For this release at least, these written notes have materially assisted this reviewer in making sense of the disc’s contents. And furthermore enabled me to appreciate and enjoy them.
I get the impression that Rafał Zapała has a pronounced sense of humour. None of this music will cheer you up – the opposite is far more likely. But some of it wlll surely make you smile and even laugh out loud. Moreover there are episodes and pieces which I think approach real beauty, regardless of whether that was the composer’s intention. Zapała may indeed be a pessimist, but he is also a pragmatist, an astute thinker, and paradoxically a dreamer. Primarily, though, he is a provocateur. I am impressed by his imaginative application of technology to reflect the philosophical rationale of this music.
The five works presented on Futility each require some kind of audience participation. Zapała is preoccupied by the implications of the concert format, be they social, commercial, psychological or artistic. He is evidently conscious of its historical genesis and its adaptation to the pecuniary or social advantage of impresarios, performers, promoters, venues and latterly to record companies. He is concerned with the nature of the exchange between consumer (the audience) and supplier (performer or label).
Zapała has coined the delightful phrase Introverts’ Collective to characterise the typical concert audience. In his introduction to the piece which bears that title, he writes: “when we meet to listen to music we are simultaneously together and alone in our inner perceptual apparatus. We become a local and temporal community of listeners – an ‘Introverts’ Collective’.“ For live performances, audiences can download a tailored app to their smartphones; they are subsequently presented with online statements alluding to the nature of audience participation with which they can signal their agreement or otherwise. In this way, their responses are made to influence the shape and sound of the work in real time. It may sound gimmicky but it arguably provides a long overdue jolt to the niceties of concert convention. Whilst such interference is not physically possible for those listening to a CD or stream at home, Kairos have helpfully provided a QR code in the booklet. The code enables purchasers of the disc to at least experience the stimuli presented to live audiences for all of these pieces. Introverts’ Collective itself involves interlocking, repeated fragments of textured strings, flute, electronic pulsings and what appears to be a recording mechanism being switched on and off – presumably at specifically cued moments to incorporate the audience responses. From time to time, the pulses seem close to rock drumming conventions which further disorientate the listener. The effect is compelling yet odd. And not unattractive. What could project as empty philosophical posturing actually turns out to be well-made, through composed music which easily bears repetition. The Hashtag Ensemble are completely at one with the composer’s explicit intentions.
Judge Me Again amounts to an extraordinary concerto for flute and electronic sounds. On disc, it emerges as limpid, crystalline, atmospheric and eerily beautiful. The flautist Ania Karpowicz incorporates an arsenal of extended techniques, including amplified glissandi, multiphonics and percussive flutterings. (She doubles on alto flute.) The effect of the recording upon this listener at least seems at odds with the conceit of the work and the rather shocking nature of the audience involvement. Zapała admits that Judge Me Again is influenced by the #metoo movement. It alludes to the intentional and unintentional effects when boundaries are crossed, private spaces are invaded, casual remarks are interpreted and misinterpreted, unwanted physical contact is made. Members of the audience are invited to gently touch the performer as they play; the inevitable disruption of the flow of sound becomes part of the piece (these interventions are represented in this performance by the sound of a woodblock). I wonder if one’s enjoyment of the music here is meant to trigger a kind of guilt on the part of the consumer/listener, in the same way that these days we might shy away from watching a movie we loved before we became aware of the historical misdemeanours of certain participants during its creation. It is revealing that Monika Pasiecznik’s note refers to Cut Piece, Yoko Ono’s infamous 1960s performance artwork. Zapała knows precisely what he is doing in these pieces – the sounds are both intriguing and unsettling.
Another piece which utilises a concertante-like form is No Meaning Detected for solo violin and electronics. Following a raw sustained arco, Kamil Staniczek traces a line led by the syllabic patterns of a speech synthesiser programmed to pose a series of socio-philosophical questions about art in the internet age, such as “do you miss your pre-internet brain?” and “is language a kind of music?” The role of the audience here is less interventionist, but the composer encourages them at least to consider their own responses to these questions, and not to be afraid of articulating them live. Hearing No Meaning Detected on disc may trigger superficial comparisons with Steve Reich’s instrumental accompaniment to pre-recorded speech patterns in works such as The Cave or Different Trains. Yet Zapała seems far more interested in the rhythms and repetitons of this automated interrogation as opposed to its pitches, to the point that the cultural figure repeatedly showing up in my head was Max Headroom, a ‘virtual’ personality dubbed the ‘first computer-generated TV presenter’. Max was a TV comedy staple for many thousands of folk like myself who happened to be undergraduates in the UK during the latter half of the 1980s.
In Scrolling to Zero, Zapała invites his intoverts’ collective to participate in a kind of mass meditation as we approach the end of the world. Audience members are encouraged to focus upon and chant the word ‘End’ along the lines of the ‘Om’ sound articulated by Zen Buddhists. The concept derives from Eugene Thacker, the doyen of philosophical pessimism. We are surrounded by the seemingly irresistible rise of strongman populism, wars driven by dictators’ greed for territory and resources as opposed to benign ideology, lethal plagues which emerge seemingly from nowhere, the extreme effects of climate change and so on. Thacker proposes that – as we have no control whatsoever over these phenomena – we must eventually yield to the ‘unthinkable’, a scale of catastrophe that is literally beyond our capacity to understand. So we might as well just chill and repeat the long-breathed mantra ‘End’. During the first part of Scrolling to Zero (another brilliant title), the composer blends cheesy organ motifs and automated (seemingly feminine) voices diffused via a device known as Philips Philicorda. These voices almost casually intone phrases along the lines of “it’s the end”, before cheerfully encouraging us to chill out, repeat the mantra and immerse ourselves in the sounds of the mechanical organs. There are even a few ghastly puns as the piece develops but a rather paradoxical mood persists as the claustrophobic vibes deepen into waves of irresistible inundation. It is amusing, but whether it bears repetition (apart from playing it to your mates at those final day Armageddon parties) is another matter.
Thacker’s jolly ideas are also central to the work which lends the album its title. In Futility, the audience participation aspect is particularly novel and unbeknown to the participants (at least at its outset) completely, you guessed it, futile. The material allocated to the Hashtag Ensemble’s acoustic instruments (flute, tenor recorder, viola, cello and double-bass) and electric guitar represents human activity, purposeful striving, even art. But the players’ endeavours are up against an immovable, unfeeling and overwhelming force in the form of a layer of virulent electronics. The audience are told that by manipulating a console they have downloaded onto their phones they will be able to thwart the synthetic din and presumably save humanity. Except this is a lie, an illusion perhaps mirrored by the example of the pressure we place upon ourselves to put the bottles in the grey bin and the plastics in the blue one, only to realise at a later date that this action is only useful if we all do it. The amorphous electronic fuzz at the beginning of Futility is a sign of what’s to come – an unpleasant migraine-inducing din. Zapała’s electronic effects outdo the worst excesses of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s sonic accompaniments to Dr Who’s most terrifying adversaries during the 1960s. The electric guitar seems to straddle both layers of material. Fragments of what appear to be vox pop type street interviews are interpolated into this melange along with synthetically produced statements which align with Thacker’s gloomy, arguably realistic purview. Futility is perhaps not the piece to choose last thing at night to accompany your Horlicks.
As far as I can establish, the performances throughout this disc lack nothing in commitment or accuracy. The sonics are magnificent in their projection of tiny detail within what is often a huge sound. As I mentioned before, the documentation is beyond exemplary. I find Zapała’s ideas fascinating if harrowing, compelling and novel. I suspect he will have found their translation into actual instrumental and synthetic music in all five of these performances to be ideal.
In my view, the most successful contemporary music is that which melds challenge, provocation and accessibility. This stunning disc certainly ticks those three boxes.
But at this point, after grappling with Futility for 72 hours, Armageddon out of here!!
Richard Hanlon
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