Science Group Related Reviews
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To most of us, the term progressive rock means concept albums, triple necked guitars and cape-wearing keyboard wizards, most of whom who retired hurt in the punk rock wars of 1976. But while punk grew into a movement as reactionary and commercialised as the status quo (no pun intended) it set out to destroy, a strain of exploratory, politically radical and complex music was being made that did (and still does) merit the term 'progressive'. Chris Cutler's ReR label has been a key outlet for such efforts since the late 70s, and despite sometimes perilous financial straits seems to go from strength to strength with each release.
The Science Group are led by composer and keyboardist Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer. Spoors is their second album, and in a slightly altered lineup features guitarist Mike Johnson in place of Fred Frith, along with the wonderful Bob Drake on bass and Cutler's octopoidal drums. While their debut featured Amy Denio singing Cutler's quantum physics inspired texts, this is a purely instrumental record.
Even without musings on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Cat, it's difficult to escape thoughts of bewildering subatomic phenomena when dealing with the intricacies of this fantastically rich music. This really doesn't sound much like anything else; bursts of free improv, C20 classical, cheesy organ melodies, sampladelic cut 'n' paste, advanced mathrock pulses, drum 'n' bass, cheerful dissonances, echoes of Eastern European folk, all assembled with a watchmaker's precision and cut with Drake's singular engineering skills.
It may be virtuosic stuff, but it's the collective virtuosity of a string quartet rather than the mere ego boosting showmanship that usually happens when advanced instrumental technique ends up in the hands of rock musicians. But neither are the Science Group a bunch of automata obeying the composer's wishes.
Drake's slightly warped imagination infects his spiralling, crunchy basslines, while Cutler sounds like Keith Moon playing Varese's Ionisation as he rides Tickmayer's fiendish time signatures. Johnson switches from angular distortions to amiable twanging to full on avant metal thrash. Tickmayer's samples and keyboards glue proceedings together with slabs of sour chords, hyperspeed arpeggios and bursts of digital noise.
Exhausting, obtuse and beautiful all at once, the Science Group prove that in the right hands, rock (or whatever you want to call it) is an infinitely malleable form, capable of expressing pretty much anything. Here comes the Science bit...
Reviewer: Peter Marsh
Released: 3rd January 2004 on the BBC website
Keyboardist Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer’s compositions are weirdly embellished within a potpourri of contemporary classical undertones, progressive rock stylizations, and extreme avant-garde tendencies. On the group's second release, guitarist Mike Johnson (Thinking Plague) replaces Fred Frith.
Once again, drumming hero Chris Cutler (Henry Cow) graces his associates’ unorthodox manifesto via his signature style mode of exactness and ability to navigate thru impossibly complex time signatures. With Tickmayer’s fluid compositions, this quartet operates with a cyclonic like intensity. Here, an indirect sense of spookiness sometimes coalesces with the musicians’ odd tunings, multihued electronics, layered acoustic-electric guitar parts, and a sardonic modus operandi. It’s a Science Project for sure. As the band switches gears within a nanosecond’s timeframe. Consequently, the overriding sense of adventure witnessed here, cannot be undermined. Think of Frank Zappa’s zaniness combined with impressionistic art, liquefying EFX and it all might seem as though you were caught up in a downright, preposterous dream. It’s a snaking path of ultramodern musical statements. (Highlyrecommended…)
Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita
www.jazzreview.com
Being part of a real-life science group myself, I can appreciate where this band is coming from. My day job as a molecular biologist consists of picking up questions and trying to find answers, with a certain amount of head-bashing and plenty of unpredictable stabs in the dark. This particular collection of musical experimenters returns with its second record, Spoors, after many changes in orientation and personnel (most notably the loss of a vocal element). The current Science Group includes composer/keyboard player Steven Kovacs Tickmayer, bassist Bob Drake, drummer Chris Cutler, and guitarist Mike Johnson. It's a solid, intuitively connected quartet.
It's hard to discern exactly how these pieces are put together, but they are clearly assembled according to some (relatively predetermined) master plan. That would be the so-called “modern classical” element of the record. The details are Tickmayer's business, but the sheer and unrelenting recklessness of the music works for exactly that reason. It's a postmodern love-fest, full of weird harpsichord-like themes, bells, samples, and outer space noises—blown up repeatedly by rock-hard grooves, intense drill-n-bass patterns, detours into swing and calypso, and so on. (Most often it resembles prog-rockers like King Crimson, but that's a vast simplification.) Regular beats often, but dark atmospheres just as well.
Such an approach is, like molecular biology, usually a recipe for failure. Science is, after all, all about the unknown. But in all honesty this particular attempt is an utter and complete success. You have to be willing to follow jump cuts through ten genres in one piece, accept brief periods of unabashed noise, and see what weird sounds these players can make out of their gear. The four suites here (representing 15 individual tracks) don't have a great deal of obvious coherence, but much of the message lies between the lines. The changes are not at all random, and the connections between them are often surprisingly enlightening.
It's hard to recommend such a frantic, open-ended record to just anyone. The music begs constant attention, continually surprises, and insists on regular irony. But take the plunge, check out the unknown, and you might just float. This is really cool stuff.
Nils Jacobson (allaboutjazz.com)
...a mere coinicidence... related reviews:
An instant classic from an avant-prog nerd's dream band
Slippery, elusive and prone to flying off at odd angles and obscure tangents at a moments notice, the Science Group's arcane musical theorems function as a virtual object lesson in leaving the listener in the lurch. A quick perusal of the participants résumés (Henry Cow, Art Bears, Massacre and Tone Dogs to name but a few) should clue you in to the magnitude of talent involved here. Together, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Bob Drake, Steven Tickmayer and Amy Denio form an avant-prog nerd's dream band. Next to the structural chicanery and time-signature torture on display here though, the participants' other ensembles sound like Menudo. Now oppressive, now expansive, Drake's patented paradoxical production values (previously put to such fine use in his mind-erasing ensembles 5uu's and Thinking Plague) have been taken to their end-game conclusion here as successive vistas of surrealist audio architecture unfold, implode and reconfigure, signaling your synapses to follow suit. All of the above functions as a sublime counterpoint to Cutler's exploratory texts about chaos theory, quantum physics, black holes and the formation of galaxies. Like subatomic particles whose appearance changes relative to the instruments used in their detection, A Mere Coincidence will register as many things to many people. To me, it means bearing witness to artistic godhead. It also means I need to lie down.
Eric Lumbleau
Fascinating album taking in free-jazz, powerpop and prog (often in one song).
So here it is, Quantum Mechanics: The Musical (subtitled Schrodinger's CATS! perhaps). Actually this album is a coherent and important piece of work, and not without a sense of humour itself. Cutler has written lyrics which grapple with some fairly intractable scientific and philosophical ideas: genetic engineering, chaos theory, love. Modern classical composer Stevan Tickmayer has set them to music. If that sounds a bit dry, think again. The settings refelct the complexities and simplicities of the subject matter perfectly. On Mnemonic futuristic Thelonius Monk bursts forth from a sub-atomic electronic strom and then is subsumed again. Lost In Translation describes the Big Bang thus: "An explosion with no centre / An expansion with no edge". And then acts it out. Other tracks are even 'listenable', nay melodic, vocalist Amy Denio coming on like a boffin choir-girl. As school textbooks used to say - Physics Is Fun.
Joe Cushley
Chris Cutler (HENRY COW, ART BEARS, PERE UBU) & Bob Drake (HAIL) team up to play the works of composer Steven Tickmayer. Fasten your seatbelts…this is probably the most intense experimental rock album ever made, hurtling at light speed through as many riffs, off beat chord changes and impossible vocal lines as can be crammed onto a CD. Occasional points of rest from the onslaught are provided! Interspersed are beautiful and quiet passages, reminiscent of Avro Part, with vocals provided by Amy Denio (CURLEW and the NUDES)…
V.Good
Sunday Times review 21/11/1999
While this ad hoc group of new music marvels may not match the powerhouse amplification of Fear Factory or Type O Negative decibel for decibel, the intensity and density from this one-off collaboration may be just as extraordinary. And not because the music is doomy and experimental, although this isn't some free jazz folks squawking their brains out in tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Using the figurative texts of Henry Cow/Pere Ubu drummer Chris Cutler, composer/keyboardist Stevan Tickmayer forges a harsh blend subterranean electronics and noxious classical themes, eliciting an exotic chamber of horrors from the dark side of the avant-garde. Tickmayer slowly amasses his work by layering an assortment of musical tidbits (a Dixieland clarinet here, a prepared piano there) into a thick, concentrated, gothic-sounding maze. Forwarding the elements to remixer Bob Drake, the music is run through some startling sonic treatments, while a few guest contributors (vocalist Amy Denio and guitarist Fred Frith, among others) add some conclusive touches. The resulting sounds are as diverse as their ingredients. For instance, segments of "Lost In Translation" are poppy and funky enough to be a lost Eurythmics track, while parts of "Engineering" sound like Bauhaus mixed with Philip Glass. Likewise, the thick Hammond organ chords of "Open or Closed?" sound like Jimmy Smith trying his nimble fingers at some Sun Ra. Of course, the music has its own logic and seamless flow of changes, all of which sounds much more cohesive and strung together than this review's laundry list of contents. And especially given the peculiar, dark quality of the whole project. Fans intrigued by these sorts of Kronos/Balanescu/Soldier String semi-classical musings or Zornish downtown travels will enjoy this immensely.
Richard Proplesch
AMZ
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