The self-titled debut by the new quartet Bitterviper brings together an invigorating blend of figures in the Greek cellist Nikos Veliotis, who in a former life led the pioneering synthwave outfit In Trance 95 before taking bow to string and becoming a drone practitioner, his latest release true to form as earlier this year he issued the austere CRYO with the pianist Alex Zethson; the dexterous Taku Unami who in his own work tends to extemporise on guitar and electronics and has collaborated frequently with the likes of Taku Sugimoto and Toshiya Tsunoda; the composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies whose recent works have seen her commune with the frogs behind her house in the Hudson Valley and embark on a stellar collaboration with Tristan Kasten-Krause; and David Grubbs the Gastr del Sol guitarist and sometime pianist who between a duet with Loren Connors and the richly collaborative Whistle from Above unveiled another new group effort last year by way of the Western-licked trio Squanderers.
At this point the relationships between Veliotis and Unami and Veliotis and Grubbs stretch back more than twenty years, while Grubbs and Unami released a couple of duo albums in the form of Failed Celestial Creatures and Comet Meta in 2018 and 2020. Hennies a lively and sought after composer and percussionist whose interests range from punk rock to Iannis Xenakis and from psychoacoustics to questions of queer and trans identity has previously overlapped with the other three members of the group only obliquely, via a couple of group exercises with Rutger Zuydervelt and Matmos, and here adds yet another compelling texture to the mix.
On what feels like a brisk yet billowing set of four songs and about forty minutes, this Bitterviper opens through an interplay of woozily bowed drones, throbbing synth patterns, wiry percussion and wafting or wayfaring guitar harmonics. The album notes suggest that the quartet’s ‘minimalist interplay passes through dense harmonic fields, transcendentally ionised ambient moods and soundtracks’ and indeed this opening composition is all charge, entitled ‘Bird of Prey Beaten Back’ with the incessant percussion of Hennies sounding like the rapid flapping of suspended wings while towards the end of the piece the ache of the cello evokes the dolorous cries of a trumpet.
Despite the pleasantly inviting title ‘Pillows Plumped for the Guests’ opens through a more choppy or brackish drone, once again led by Veliotis and his cello, which soon congeals into a high-pitched swarm offset by the steady march or bottomless, guttural rumble of Grubbs now playing piano. Cymbal crashes sound like vents gushing open and harmonise jarringly with the keys, as the ubiquitous drone continues to shift shape without ever changing, from a seafaring tow to that buzzing swarm to what now begins to resound like so many stacked voices engaged in a swell of incessant mumbling. Just beyond the halfway mark, one big clang like a piano lid suddenly slamming shut jars the piece and gives way to a more spare composition. The drone takes a back seat, now more like the faint but present creaking of a door, as small mallet percussions like chimes and gongs are struck with a sense of menace or dubious portent.
The low drone of ‘In Vivo Receptor’ jives with ricocheting percussion and nebulous guitar strums. At first it seems like the track might be a barnstormer but instead the quartet stay resolutely in the middle zone, like a storm which threatens brusquely only to avert its gaze, whittling at the rafters without ever shaking the foundations of the building. Finally the quartet pound at the door, asking to be invited to the hoedown before Bitterviper staggers to a close through ‘Gravity Does Its Worst’, which plays out in truncated fashion like so many scenes from a crisis.
Existing as a series of brief surges or fragments, ‘Gravity Does Its Worst’ opens with a more staticky and distorted drone as the cello now takes longer arcs, suggesting a different type of vacillation. By turns each fragment or phrase begins to sound like an incipient air disaster, at last replete with sonar as the quartet’s plane gets steadily submerged, in a manner that calls to mind Laurie Anderson’s tribute Amelia from last year or some of the work by Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin as Ghosted.
