Folktales, Vol. 2

Seven months after Folktales, Vol. 1, the Wisconsin-based label Crouton released Vol. 2. The series aims at putting literature in the place of cinema in the expression "cinema for the ear." This installment is presented in the same format as the previous one, i.e., three 3" CDs, each devoted to one artist and containing 15 to 20 minutes of music, with all three artists co-writing a "tale" (more like a cadavre exquis) included in the original four-panel jacket. This time the contributors are Jon Mueller, Bhob Rainey, and Achim Wollscheid. For "How I Learned to Breathe," Mueller is credited for "drum set." Nothing in it sounds like drums -- the closest it gets is cymbals being bowed. Delicate and highly textural, the piece reinvents the drum set as a playground. The listener is left clueless as to how these sounds, which could as well come from a trumpet, a double bass, or a synthesizer, were obtained. The title of that piece would also fit Rainey's solo soprano saxophone suite in five parts, "Sweet Sonk." Intimately recorded, it features the soloist stretching notes and stripping down his playing to mouth and key sounds in an aesthetic similar to Axel Dörner and Scott Rosenberg. The fourth part is particularly stunning: Rainey plays long, sustained notes so pure they sound like electronic tones, at a slow pace inducing meditation. Wollscheid's "X-excerpt" is taken from a radio performance. Using CDs and his laptop, he collages his sources into an interesting sonic narrative, but his piece pales in comparison with what preceded (and it lacks a proper ending). Folktales, Vol. 2 has been released in a limited edition of 300.