Cold Blue / Various

The Cold Blue label has always made a good, small contribution to making new music available to the public. This Cold Blue Sampler is an offering of new music from several years ago. Among samplers, it's a good one. Like most samplers, it suffers a little bit from a lack of continuity of the music - that's the nature of samplers. On the other hand, it's a good introduction to some important composers/performers. The music here is consistently good. This is quietly challenging music. Chas Smith's "Beatrix" is a wonderful start, with it's quiet beginning of plucking (processed stringed instruments - banjo, dobro...) followed soon by a jarring chord that hangs in the air and slowly decays. There's is much music to enjoy here, and it does the job of a sampling of musics - it gives the listener an introduction to these composers and musicians, and it offers a starting point for finding more of their music to experience. I recommend taking the first step of listening to this music, and then enjoy the journey of exploring more of the artists represented on this disc.

Back in the early eighties, Cold Blue surfaced as a distinctive presence among new music labels. It released a number of vinyl records but then disappeared for a while until it was resuscitated in the spring of 2001. Cold Blue is a reissue of a long out of print anthology LP originally released in 1984. It features contributions by Jim Fox, Chas Smith, Daniel Lentz, Peter Garland, Rick Cox, Michael Jon Fink and Eugene Bowen in collaboration with Harold Budd, among others. Chas Smith, who has released a handful of more-or-less impressive solo records on the same label, opens the set with a surprisingly jarring piece for banjo and pedal steel guitar. Ingram Marshall follows with a contemplative piece for mandolin, piano and electronics. Titled "Gradual Siciliano," the piece is clearly a variation on the sort of Sicilian melody used by Nino Rota in his themes for the Godfather. An angry, thundering piano is accompanied by at first a pounding drum and then a roaring bullroarer in Peter Garland's dramatic "The Three Strange Angels." Michael Byron (who released Music for Nights Without Moon or Pearl last year on Cold Blue) contributes an intriguing piece for marimbas recorded live in Toronto. This is followed by a stunning composition by Jim Fox for piano accompanied by the most subtle contributions on electric guitar and cello; a remarkable expression of subtlety and sadness. Another intriguing piece is Read Miller's "Weddings, Funerals, and Children Who Cannot Sleep," where two speaking voices become muffled and swallowed up by Chas Smith's Serge processing. Michael Jon Fink's "Celesta Solo" plays like a quiet lullaby. Eugene Bowen and Harold Budd produce a track that looks back to the early ambient experiments of Cluster and Brian Eno (and of course by Harold Budd himself), with the distinctive sound of a guitar synth dominating the piece alongside a keyboard synth. Also included here is one previously unreleased piece for solo piano by David Mahler and performed by Bryan Pezzone; the notes are light and warm, yet the mood continues in Cold Blue's characteristic theme of gentle melancholy. In all, Cold Blue is as compelling today as it would have been when it was originally released all those years ago; an anthology with many voices, distinct yet united under the label's vision of presenting some of the most innovative and accomplished new music coming out of the American west coast.