Recorded live in a Swiss jazz club nearly four years ago, this collaboration between the adventurous German trio Perlonex and U.S. cult minimalist Charlemagne Palestine is suitably prickly yet all too engaging. It Ain’ Necessarily So documents two sets and a quick encore over 2 CDs, ranging from discursive noise and near-subliminal drone to Palestine’ roguish deconstruction of the titular refrain from the Gershwin songbook.
During the first set we hear the cognac glass Palestine is credited with before his tentative work on grand piano joins the ephemeral fray. Buzzing guitar eventually ushers in a rise in activity, with a deeper drone making for a nail-biting undercurrent. Palestine’ ragged, choppy piano melody is front and centre by the 22-minute mark, and his craggy vocals suddenly appear some time later. As cryptic sounds crackle and flicker all around, he later spouts what’s either gibberish or another language, coughs, and slurs his singing with enough venom to recall The Fall’ Mark E. Smith. He mostly repeats the same refrain in different cadences, while the set comes to a fairly mellow close followed by applause and a bit of stage banter.
The second set begins with the dying chatter of the crowd, which seeps in as much as any makeshift instrument here. There’ again piano, vague textures shifting and shuffling, and the general feeling of musique concrete aside from the stray melody being dismantled. After 20 minutes Palenstine sings again, this time with more allusions to Gershwin and even a stab at scat. It’s much more light-hearted, though the music soon takes a turn for the ominous. Things are noisy for a fair bit before cymbals come in behind the growing growl, only to see it all drop away again. Perhaps as expected, the encore is a bit of leftover vibe from the heart of the proceedings, but it informs the rest well enough.
Obviously this isn’ for everyone, but Palestine and Perlonex are incredibly adept at getting under one’ skin, often with a combination of lulling clutter and clawing chaos. There are decades’ worth of deconstructive chops evident in this freaky, cleansing work.
Doug Wallen
