Rothko - Forty Years to Find a Voice
(Lo)
For anyone else, the three-bass band format would have been a musical
straitjacket. But where most would see restriction, Rothko finds liberation.
Like promises, obligations exist to be negated by those of strong enough
substance to rise up against the rules. All the more so obligatory
instrumentation, rock n' roll, and the rigid guitar-bass-and-drums
role-playing that has grown so stale with the years. Rothko's bass triad
reassesses the value of an instrument traditionally relegated to the shadows
and shoals. What is a bass if not a specialized guitar, endowed with the
richest shades of wood and wire's innate colors? Why, then, shouldn't the bass
be afforded a share of the limelight lavished upon the frets of the
six-string's most sensitive essayists?
1999's lovely A Negative for Francis, a session of private discoveries and
small revelations, found Rothko learning the depths of shade and nuance bound
within the electric bass. After the lessons, the recital. Forty Years to Find
a Voice presents a trio of bassists acquainted with--and eager to share--their
instrument's most thrilling secrets. The patient probing has uncovered a
splendid spectrum of under, over, and mid-tones. But art is yet in the
application, not in the illumination, and all is for naught if texture can't
be reunited with structure. What had only shape and shadow on Francis finds
form in Forty Years. Basslines express contoured and interlocked post-punk
figures, finally explaining the strange glints of feedback and the glare of
reflected harmonics. The majestic arcs of "Shock of Self," "Herbivore," and
"Flown" create recesses in which light pools, darkness deepens, and mystery
grows. Having mastered design, Rothko approaches the question of décor.
"Pencil Sketch" and "Dream of Mountain Air" are draped in diaphanous samples
(provided by Lo Recordings head/longtime Rothko advocate Jon Tye), hiding
subtle curves behind billows, scrims, and veils. The cresting chords of
"Breatharian" sport a sea-spume cap in Sarah Measures' flute; opener "Open"
wraps itself longingly around the plummeting, wind-wound pennants of Simon
Tilbury's voice. Both are bids for sheer, shivering prettiness so exquisitely
evanescent that the CD player rarely makes it past the (2nd) track without an
instant review/replay. Measures returns on "Us to Become Sound," grazing the
outermost edge of Rothko's multiplying ripples with clarinet. Accent nearly
overtakes outline as Andy Diagram's (Spaceheads) trumpet swoops and scrolls, threatening
the fragile folk fretwork of "Sky Blue Glow." Diagram dissolves more fluidly
into "A Whole Life of Memory," whose limpid beauty could buoy a Mark Hollis
adrift upon a mid-afternoon muse. Towering above all other tracks, however, is
"A Search for No Answer," a "Bert & John"-like roundelay of ruminative
thoughts chasing their vapor-tails in blissful counterpoint.
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