CD - Line
The ambivalence of the title “For/Not For John Cage” and the reference to the master (whose birthday saw its hundredth anniversary last year) is suggestive of a versatile, multi-sided and chaotic treatment. While partially the case the record also features pleasantly iterated and ambient frequencies . Laurence English unravels his textures in elegantly breezy and evocative passages, whispering and rarefied. Here we have a “refurbishment” and reinterpretation of one of Cage’s last works, One11 With 103, from 1991/2, a delicate piece organized for a black and white film without script that is evocative of dilated and ethereal time. The perception of absence, of emptiness as opposed to presence, and the casual quality of the unfolding is exploited by English, here joined by video-artist Scott Morrison who takes on the role of original director of photography Theodore Carlson. Throughout this process of “drawing from the real”, the intimate participation in Cage’s vision has produced additional materials: the section called “Not For John Cage”, which is drenched in a moving and philosophical atmosphere, permeated with uncertain and emotionally vague elements. Near the end a sophisticated quote is included, wherein a mushroom peeps out during a fade, referencing Cage’s curious appearance on an Italian tv quiz show “Lascia o Raddoppia” in the fifties in the guise of a mycologist.
Aurelio Cianciotta