Recorded in June 2006 and subsequently ‘edited and constructed’ by Will Guthrie for this release, Thought Provoking III is the final work from Austrian sound artist Helmut Schafer before his death in 2007. Packaged in a card-embossed jewel case with minimalist design a la ECM, one is misleadingly led to expect a kind of Scandinavian chamber politeness. Instead Schafer presents a lengthy, gritty drone constructed from his own organ pipe contraption and electronics with Elisabeth Gmeiner on violin and Guthrie’s percussion, electronics and production.
The three work in such close harmony, literally and metaphorically, that it’s difficult to determine who is doing what. Bowed metal, sporadic thuds and the creak of stretched wood dominate, with events patiently deployed to make most use of both sonic and temporal space. There are also spacious pockets of digital fizz and whirr, closely matching the acoustic timbres. Most alluring are those sounds most easily traceable to Schafer, brief foghorn blasts or breathy blown chords from his pipes. There’s a great sense of balance at work here, each contributor finely tuned to the piece’s demands, and while hardly chuckle inducing the sense of enjoyment in performing the work is palpable.
For his remix frequent Stefan Mathieu collaborator Zbigniew Karkowski condenses the work into seven minutes, adds a lot of hissing detail but loses the original’s subtlety. The creaking ice floes that open the piece are certainly attractive however, and the build to strafing white noise adds a degree of volume to an otherwise subdued recording.
Joshua Meggitt
