The final track on Joseph Bertolozzi’s literally titled ‘Bridge Music’ reveals the composer’s populist approach, Bertolozzi providing a blow-by-blow, or rather bash-by-bash ‘audio-tour’ of the tones used to create the album. It remains a tough sell: ‘Bridge Music’ builds on Bertolozzi’s solo percussion opus ‘The Bronze Collection’ originally performed at the 2004 US Open, constructing a ‘symphony for suspension bridge’ of sounds sourced directly from the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Its an interesting concept: bridges are vast things, rich in sound-generating potential, and their function lends itself easily to artistic inspiration; unfortunately, ‘Bridge Music’ disappoints musically.
Bertolozzi readily admits that his project is not wholly original, and he’s happy to name his influences, most notably Harry Partch and Einsturzende Neubauten. You can certainly hear their work here, Partch in the many and varied marimba plinks of mallet on metal, Neubauten in the deep industrial clanging of resonant, heavily hammered steel. The tones created by the suspension cables sound like 303 pulses, and elsewhere Bertolozzi generates close analogues of a standard drum kit, from kick drum to splash cymbal. The resultant constructions resemble a kind of IDM/gamelan marriage: Aphex Twin-esque drill n’ bass blasts, 2-step rhythms, 4/4 bass thuds and spacious marimba passages, all crafted into neat, ordered patterns. The tightly wound taps of ‘Bridge Funk’ resemble raster noton unplugged, while ‘The Hudson Suite’ recalls ‘Bone-Machine’-era Tom Waits, although neither are particularly exciting. Clearly a sequencer was the major instrument at work here, and soon you forget that you’re hearing a bridge at all. Sandwiched into a brave instrumental hip-hop set it some of these pieces might work, but alone like this, it’s an uninspiring novelty album.
Joshua Meggitt
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