Aural Fixations

ERIK FRIEDLANDER
Maldoror
(Brassland)
Cellist Erik Friedlander is well known for taking risks, as evidenced by a career that's moved him from philharmonic orchestras to jazz combos, with names like John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Dave Douglas on his resume. I can imagine he probably leaped at the chance for a project like Maldoror, a series of solo improvisations based on Lautreamont's celebrated surrealist classic. Published in the 1860s by a pseudonymous young poet with a prodigious talent and a coal-black sense of humor, Maldoror shocked French society with its gory prose and philosophically irreverent attitude. (Sample line: "Discontented in mind, he hurriedly gets dressed again, casts a prudent glance towards the dusty pathway where no one is walking, and orders the bulldog to strangle a blood-bespattered young girl with a snap of his jaws.") Producer Michael Montes chose ten excerpts (reprinted in the booklet), placed them on a stand in front of Friedlander and let the cellist fly. Friedlander applies his technical virtuosity, cerebral imagination and avant-garde instincts to a set of stunning pieces that wring more emotions out of an instrument than a hundred rock guitar players. Of course, befitting the source material, they're not always particularly pleasant emotions. From the casual dissonance of "The Palace of Pleasures" and the gibbering scratches of "One Should Let One's Fingernails Grow" to the fervid moans of "The Wind Groans" and crazy-eyed screeches of "Here Comes the Madwoman," Friedlander and his cello evoke heaven, hell, death, rebirth, love, hate and every state in between. It's an amazing performance with a genesis shocking mostly in that no one's previously used Maldoror as inspiration. While this is hardly the sort of record that will spend time in the car during drive time, it is one I'll pull out whenever I want to be reminded of the artistic potential that can be realized by boundless musical imagination. Michael Toland [buy it]