Sowing the Seeds - The Trummerflora keeps growing
"Trummerflora" is a German term used to describe the growth of an ecosystem in a wasteland full of debris (rubble plants and trees). It's a brilliantly appropriate name for a group of artists that has shaken up the American cultural underground and continues to do so either as a collective or by the actions of its individual members.

One of the places to meet and exchange thoughts on stage are the regular "Other ideas"-evenings at the Alta Voz in Downton San Diego. Here, Jazz and Rock, Experimental Sound Scapes and Songs, Electronics and Acoustic Instruments go on an exciting journey each time around. Things won't be any different for the next two concerts.
First off, there's the Curtis Glatter / Nathan Hubbard Duo. Both composers and percussionists, their collaboration aims to use electronically edited drum sounds to build aural land scapes. Having said this, maybe the word "aural" is already misguiding, as they put special emphasis on the fact that their work is inspired by film makers such as Cocteau and Dreyer. Which is not to say that this another of those "sound track for the mind"-projects. Rather, some of the duos' favourite movies serve as an aesthetic inspiration, guiding the compositional process and injecting it with freshness and momentum.
Then, keep your eyes and ears open for Brain Killer, a trio that will add Mark Dresser to its ranks for a night of wild improvisation. Take the stylistic ingredients we mentioned from the outset, add to that classical music and ethnic elements and you still only have a faint clue as to what might happen.


The Glatter/Hubbard Duo are to perform on September 29th and Brain Killer are to be appearing on October 9th. Which gives you plenty of time to make room in your agenda.

http://www.mouvement-nouveau.com/newsitems/sowingtheseeds/view
 
"Rivulet" Circumvention Music
San Diego-based duo began a long-running and fruitful collaboration in 2001, following Curtis Glatter's exodus from Michigan. This release embodies the main emphasis of their work, in the compositional/improvisational performance of new music for silent films - creating artful & imaginary soundtracks for the cinematic works of Carl Dreyer, Jean Cocteau, et al., with the use of percussion (Glatter) + electronics (Hubbard) - and otherwise reconfiguring the relationship between sound, image and audience expectation. Ever-shifting background unease, and an interaction of mounting momentum (#1); the use of texture + overlap in gradual recomposition (#2); linear interruptions of a scissored nature allowing for cut-up tale telling (#3) & a universe of alternatives……..
Way out, even without the visuals. Mitch LeMay KFJC Los Altos Hills CA
 
Glatter, Curtis/Hubbard, Nathan
Rivulet
Circumvention 043
2006 10 01

Curtis Glatter is a member of Nathan Hubbard’s Skeleton Key Orchestra. In addition, the two percussionists have been working together as a duo since the early 2000s. Rivulet is their debut album. It consists of three compositions written in 2001-2002, premiered between 2001 and 2003, and recorded in the studio throughout 2004. Each piece is designed as a soundtrack to silent films by Carl Theodore Dreyer (Vampyr), Jean Cocteau (Mobile:Alabaster) and Akira Kurasawa (Meikyu). I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a “usual” percussion duo, but this pair surely is not a usual percussion duo. Glatter and Hubbard play an extremely large assortment of instruments, from tuned percussion (vibraphone, glockenspiel, etc.) to all kinds of trash metal and found objects (including music stands and shovels), but also prepared piano, chord organ, turntables, samples of previous gigs, field recordings, and megaphone. Vampyr is a shocking workout in the art of extremes, bouncing to and fro between trashy two-men bashing and supernaturally quiet episodes of whispers and atmospheres. Mobile:Alabaster is less manic, structurally more complex and generally more immersive. Here, musicianship and composition skills shine as the piece builds bridges between free improvisation, musique concrète and chamber music. Dominated by bamboo xylophone and vibraphone, Meikyu is by far the most melody-driven piece of the set -- a good thing, since by then the listener is getting tiresome of pie-plate drum kits. Simple cycling motives are intertwined with field recordings, electronics, and prepared piano to form evocative soundscapes that sadly lack the narrative development found in Mobile:Alabaster. Rivulet offers a perplexing yet stimulating listen. Of course, and even though that is not all this album is about, a good predisposition toward the percussive realm is strongly recommended.

François Couture
 
Curtis Glatter/Nathan Hubbard Rivulet (Circumvention/Trummerflora)
Two percussionists (and that means they each play more than a dozen instruments in each piece) who really know how to take sound into new places. Not for the meek or those who don't wish to be challenged. If you've got the patience, however, you will find some truly glorious noise. - Aiding and Abetting
 

The two multi-instrumentalists and Sampler, Phonographer and Sound-experts Curtis Glatter and Nathan Hubbard created a truly avant-garde work with "Rivulet." The 3 Tracks on the CD were played in between May and December 2004. Both musicians used many instruments, above all miscellaneous rhythm-instruments, that use her/it/them not only in the classic sense, for it considerably. Field Recordings are to be heard, sounds of the outside world, with microphone picked up and mixed at the laptop.
The over 27 minutes-long "Vampyr" opens the horizon of the CD. No sound, no sound of the strange one(s), almost ambient of working sound-art works disturbingly or incorrectly with it at the place. Steps, wind and other sounds as well as the sound of the instruments turn into an unexpectedly interesting sound that is pleasantly and in all the noise hearing-agreeable and catchy, if one is sufficiently curious to listen the sounds for her/its/their duration. "Vampyr" is an atmospheric radio play, stages sensitively and from complex tonal music-language, that recoils before harsh, loud sounds in no way and gives just as exciting Field Recordings also to quietest type's area. Interestingly the mounting of a classic choral work, not to recognize the verfremdet, is, but as bombast-motive in the sound-orgy fits. At the quiet moments, whispers, Reifenrollgeräusche, are trot, is to be heard squeak and rustle, and sounds, that sound, as somebody digs a ground on or about. Crazy piece music, not without joke and already not at all exhausting, and very entertaining.
"Mobile: Alabaster", over 24 minutes-long, is less interesting in the comparison to it, the Track begins very well on that occasion. A slanted-masterly drum-solo, to it sound-peels and all sorts of other sound-structures does the excited, emotional mood.Amazingly however, into what it turns. The grade becomes melodically and harmoniously, loses her/its/their ultra-fast played virtuosity and becomes melody-happily thickly and even corny - at least for this level. With pop-music or general electronics, that is not to be confused, the music is avant-garde purely. However, the piece loses in this context unfortunately. "Meikyu" as 19-minütiger graduations of the CD, repetitiv-minimalistisch begins what is some exhausting. A little variable, loud and clear vibraphone-figure dominates the entrance, under-mixes from Meeresrauschen. Loses the mastering vibraphone-figure and the motive for itself after some minutes melts, "Meikyu" becomes be meditative and sound-beautiful, melodic soft and airy, however, a harsh grade has.Curtis more smoothly and inspired musicians and "Rivulet" be Nathan Hubbard an exceptional sound-object. The gifted and inspired duet created a beautiful, wild work, that doesn't convince me completely personally. The surprise and tension of the work is however incredibly and even at the "softer" moments not without strength. Grand art-music for interested of extravagant sounds. - Ragazzi

translation courtesy babblefish

 
All About Jazz Italy - Vittorio Lo Conte - translation by Bablefish
The two last recordings of Nathan Hubbard, operating artist on the West Coast, are respective a pair with the percussionista Curtis Glatter and a collection on CD of its compositions of the last years, executed from various ensembles with all the possible combinations orchestrates them, from the quartet of sassofoni to that one of percussions passing for pianoforti it prepares to you and orchestras with it arches.
The pair with Curtis Glatter not only draws inspiration from the musical world: it is introduced like ideal sonorous column of works of the cinema and of the theatre, like the dedications to Carl Dreyer, Akira Kurosawa and Jean Cocteau they make to intuire. A rich music of effects and spazii, new in the way in which the percussivi instruments they come uses you, in way sometimes separated, to evoke however rich feelings of expectations, like along "Vampyr", with atmospheres that resist the tension for along time, evocative of facts and personages who space at the same time in the fantasy of executory and asccoltatori. The brano dedicated to Jean Cocteau è più legacy to the jazz like ritmico aspect, an pleasant change of march after along rambling in tries of an outlet of light in the previous brano and on "Meikyu" an unusual one succeeds in vibrafono to pull before on melodie that all it comes wrapped in with of concrete sounds that dull from tapes and instruments prepare to you. An unusual sonorous landscape that sure troverà in tuning many listeners to the search of new cues.
These two works could wake up the interest of coreografi and directors and serve like unusual sonorous column for their works.