Signal To Noise:

POW Ensemble
Birdsong from Inside the Egg
X-OR CD 019
- Andrew Choate

Like the French film/ sound collective Metamkine or the Japanese theater group Dumb Type, this visionary Dutch ensemble has created their own medium. They use tap dancing, computers, improv, poetry and whatever else is needed for each song. The POW Ensemble is the brainchild of saxophonist, sound activist and label proprietor Luc Houtkamp. Thirteen guests are scattered across the thirteen tracks of Birdsong from Inside the Egg, their second full length, and even the eight regular ensemble members appear and disappear as needed for each composition’s enactment.

Three members of the Nederlands Vocaal Laboratorium join vocalist Han Buhrs on “Fthang” and “In de La” to explore the enunciation of nonsense phonemes delivered like actual sentences and then sung in resplendent harmony. A computer squeaks and squirts in the background. The combination is superbly disorienting and engaging. The Jargon Strings – a trio of cello, violin and viola – team up with Behsat ?vez’s oud and Guy Harries’ voice on “The Vigil” to create a Middle Eastern electronic chamber incantation.

Martin Blume (drums), Johannes Bauer (trombone) and Dieter Manderscheid (bass), the other members of FOURinONE with Houtkamp, create a long glitch plus improvised music track on “Teaming Up VI” using swerving electronics and small rules for the interaction of acoustic instruments with computers, marking a rare achievement for the blessing of computers entering the domain of jazz.

Marije Nie’s tap dancing is featured to astonishingly fresh effect on several tracks: ping-ponging between real tap sounds and squished distortions on “Bojangles Walking” and making a superfunky clunk out of the unlikely trio of tap-dancing, theremin and computer on “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” There is nothing like the music of the POW Ensemble – you can hear the deep and bizarre investment they’re making into completely untrodden paths of music in every song they make, whether it’s one of the numerous blues covers on their first album or the splattered 128 bit jazz on their latest offering: they temporarily change the connotation of multimedia from negative to positive.