Track By Track: Erik Hall – Solo Three

Solo Three draws on four composers: Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel and a return to Reich. Hall performs and records every part himself, layering instruments one by one. “Those micro-differences between takes create a sort of living, breathing magic,” he says. Here he tells us how each piece found its way onto the record.

THE TEMPLE OF VENUS PT. 1 (GLENN BRANCA)

This piece is the opening movement of Glenn Branca’s orchestral ballet The World Upside Down. In the mid-2000s my band NOMO was working a lot with Detroit musician/producer Warren Defever, aka His Name Is Alive. Not only did Warren teach me everything I knew about making records – as well as master my last several albums at Detroit’s Third Man Mastering – but he also turned me on to Glenn Branca’s work back in those early days. Like Warren (who probably owns the world’s largest collection of fuzz pedals) I was drawn to Branca’s cacophonic, multiple-electric-guitar symphonic works. But The World Upside Down was immediately on another level for me; one of those revelatory records that helps unveil the core of your interests.

Jump to a year or so ago, and I was searching for the right piece to open this new album of reinterpretations. I was in full-brainstorm mode, actually scanning my CD shelf, when I saw Branca, and it was immediately clear what to do. The actual execution of this piece presented hurdles, including hunting down Branca’s handwritten score from the Northwestern University special collections library. But it came together in the end, and somehow his lush swarms of woodwinds and strings successfully translated to my own cohort of studio keyboard instruments.

STRUMMING MUSIC (CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE)

Both of my last two records were hour-long re-creations of 20th century minimalist works. Sometime after their release, Brian Sampson – who founded and runs my label Western Vinyl – asked if I’d ever heard Charlemagne Palestine’s Strumming Music. I hadn’t, and upon listening it was clear to me why he thought I’d take to it. Its drone-like, glacially unfolding harmony was right in my wheelhouse.

For a while I considered a version as long as those prior two records of mine – and as long as Palestine’s own documented performances. In concert, he flanks himself with a pair of Bösendorfer grand pianos and plays one with each hand, hammering away in tsunami-like swells of harmony and overtones. I knew I wasn’t equipped to do this, nor would it be that interesting for me to simply repeat his process.

Instead I thought back to my rendition of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and how I started each day by recording a pair of hocketing sixteenth-note piano pulses. Not simultaneously, but one track playing the chord on the beat, followed by another track filling in all the spaces. This was a compelling approach to Strumming Music, in that I could actually execute it, but also because it was a new way to approach the piece. A couple of other left turns include condensing it to a relatively concise fifteen minutes or so, as well as adding electric guitars in unison with the pianos, which lend a bit of their own activity to the harmonic overtone light show.

A FOLK STUDY (LAURIE SPIEGEL)

I discovered Laurie Spiegel via the label Unseen Worlds. Every single thing they put out is excellent, and Spiegel’s collections are at the forefront of their catalogue in my view. What I love most about her recordings is the juxtaposition of relatively early electronics with an unabashedly jubilant and lifelike musical demeanour. To my ears, the pieces almost dare to be recreated with acoustic instruments.

But it took me a while to figure out how to make them work, and I actually transcribed and recorded a few of her pieces before finding the one that felt like a successful and compelling enough rework. What didn’t work about the others was that they distracted too much; the particular combination of the composition, instrumentation, and performance left no curtain for me – the proverbial ‘man’ – to hide behind.

With all of these recent reworks albums, it’s vital that the performance and recording not actually draw attention to me, the player, but rather keep the listening experience’s emphasis on the inherent and wondrous world that the composition already occupies. If I’m not successful in doing that, then the piece isn’t the right fit. Thankfully, I felt I was able to finally strike that balance with a Spiegel piece.

MUSIC FOR A LARGE ENSEMBLE (STEVE REICH)

By venturing into the studio with this piece, I made my unabashed return to Steve Reich, the composer whose work began this entire series. Music for a Large Ensemble originally came shortly after Music for 18 Musicians. It was commissioned and premiered at a music festival in the Netherlands in 1979, and it seems to have vaguely gone down as somewhat of a black sheep in Reich’s own view of his catalogue. I’m not entirely clear on that, but I am endlessly fascinated by the great discrepancy that can exist between how an artist views their work and how it strikes others.

For probably a full two-year period I had the CD of Large Ensemble in my car, and if I was ever driving alone it was on full blast. The piece is pure exultation and ferocity. I absorbed it so thoroughly as a listener, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the excitement to attempt my own recording.

It was surprisingly difficult to perform, particularly the electric guitars which stand in for Reich’s violins. And it’s also a lesson in orchestration, as I found such a multitude of pianos and electric pianos in my own arrangement can be a slippery slope of mud come mixing time… But ultimately I celebrated the completion of my rendition, and it serves as an appropriate bookend to the series – as well as a humble ode to my ventures with his works.

Erik Hall’s Solo Three is out now