David Jackman/Organum: Discards 10 full albums, finishes "Holy" trilogy
David Jackman aka Organum has brought his „holy“/historical trilogy to a close. What started out in mid-2003 as a move away from noise and as a break with his past work turned into a painstakingly meticulous search for precision and new forms, which saw Jackman write thirteen album's worth of material and scrapping ten of those in the process („They were just not up to the mark“, David Jackman says in retrospect). The third and final installment in the series is called „Omega“and now available from „Die Stadt“ Records in Bremen in a first pressing of 600 copies. It contains three tracks around the 15-minute mark and follows „Amen“ (also on Die Stadt) and „Sanctus“ on Robot Records. Even though „Omega“ now effectively constitutes the envisioned final chapter, there are already plans to extend the series. Back in 2007, David Jackman talked about an offshoot from the sessions, called „Psalm“, to be released as a 3-inch CD in Spring, which however still waits to see the light of day. And then there is „Aeon“, which contains elements from all three previous recordings and could act as the big finale and transform the trilogy into a quadrilogy.
Public response to the work has been mixed, as David Jackman admitted in a short interview conducted by Kevin Spencer: „Those works have got me into a bit of trouble. Some critics have inferred irony or game-playing where there is none.“, Jackman said, „Perhaps those folks are stuck in a frame of reference which says that an artist should never, ever say anything which he actually means. Others, not constrained by such fetters, sit easy with the work.“
This perceptional gap has been somewhat of a constant in the Organum catalogue, simply because Jackman is one of the artists enjoying the process of creation for its own worth alone, instead of consciously trying to „achieve“ something. And it has made things slightly more complex that many of his inspirations for the „holy“ trology stem from architecture and the visual arts: „For this set I am thinking about the big slow shapes in time and about structure, proportion, deliberate design. Those sorts of consideration are, I suppose, rooted in my far-away background in the visual. Works of visual art and of architectural engineering are of more inspiration than most pieces of music could ever be; I mean with regard to the shapes for each composition.“ David Jackman also quoted bridges and great cathedrals as sources of influences. So, too, have been the notions of symmetry (which is mirrored by the almost exact same length of pieces on each disc) and near-repetition.
David Jackman described „Omega“ as „a scattering of dissonance across a consonant sea“ and explained that it, just like the other parts of the trilogy, contained elements of „Christian chant, some number systems from Flavin“ as well as „the Golden Section from Newman“. With regards to the bipolar reaction to the previous releases, he announced his critics might get even harder stuff to chew on, as he thought about working with „the decorative“comparable to Satie's „Furniture Music“.
Homepage: David Jackman/Organum
Homepage: Die Stadt Records
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