Cassette
For whatever reason, no doubt some fault exclusively my own, I've yet to see Orion Music Workshop - or indeed, any Tom Val affiliated project - perform live. This latest tape from outerzone-dwelling aficionados Kashual Plastik goes some way towards correcting that oversight, though I suspect might not provide any kind of definitive roadmap. Orion Music Workshop, in line with the rest of Val's work, is of a shape-shifting nature, a quality expressed on a live document that starts in one place and ends up in another entirely, replete with the sense that were it to happen again, it might not even be recognisable. Val's explorations play like a travel journal across NWW list terrain, flirting with musique concrète disorientation, European minimalism, free-jazz instinct, post-industrial scuzz and dub brut. You hear the occasional interjection of audience applause, frequently enthusiastic and most certainly awe-struck, such is the free-ranging, impulse driven foray into the odd-unknown that Val favours. And so, In Concert might prove a handy surrogate for those yet to get the IRL experience, but don't expect it to be repeated or even necessarily precise - the truly Free Music never is.
FFO: Zoviet France, Jacques Berrocal, Pôle, Bernard Parmegiani
