Savant
Artificial Dance
Electronic The story of electronic music pioneer K Leimer continues with a focus on his auteurist studio project Savant Compiling the standalone album 1983's 'The Neo Realist At Risk' with Savant's debut 12 and a grip of compilation and unreleased tracks Artificial Dance documents Leimer's complete collaborative venture into the unpredictable realities of music exploring the gulf between what is expected by its creators and what is eventually and eternally committed to tape Savant was designed by Leimer to tap into entropic truths asserting an uncaged counterpart to the loopbased minimalism he produced in isolation recently surveyed on RVNG Intl's A Period of Review 19751983 Aligning himself with the Cageean principles of chance operations and musical contingency Savant was a band sans jam Allegorically a blindfolded collaboration whose happenstance source music Leimer would sample loop and sculpt at will Leimer was creatively autonomous to the point of being a persona absentia in Seattle's 80s rock scene Unconcerned by social status Leimer enlisted musicians from experimental and postpunk groups in the area to come record as Savant at his home studio Tactical Among them were ambient composer Marc Barreca John Foster founder of Op Magazine the experimental music publication Jim and David Keller of the New Flamingos and their bandmate Alex Petit Others like Roy Finch and Dennis Rea came from a similar orbit Even with these musicians at his beck and call Leimer implemented a disarming musical strategy Savant would have no fixed line up and often musicians would be asked to play instruments far outside their forte Leimer would however give loose rhythmic direction for the musicians to develop spontaneously against clicktracks When the performance locked in with Leimer listening at the controls he'd capture it to tape These moments became the soul of Savant and the combustive elements that would variegate its timbres Savant tonally operates in a space between This Heat's dark primitivism and the found sound collage of Brian Eno and David Byrne's 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' These analogies are simply stylistic as the narrative behind The NeoRealist's production makes clear Leimer was concocting via more alchemic means avoiding genre aspirations by looking for accidental moments of musical intrigue and discovery Leimer explains this process in the collection's liner notes I was looking for flaws for faults to act as the standout features of the music Far from a provisional stab at avantgarde sensibilities Savant represents Leimer's repudiation of ambient music's passive side Artificial Dance embodies a perfectionist's family portrait of outre musicians conforming to Leimer's nonconformist musical ethos Fitting for its name Leimer created conditions for asocial brilliance with Savant materializing an outward offering from an inward studio and a collaboration of audacious invention
Tracklist
1. Using Words
2. Indifference
3. The Neo-realist
4. Shadow in Deceit
5. The Shining Hour
6. Knowledge and Action
7. Heart of Stillness
8. Stationary Dance
9. Sensible Music
10. Deceit in Passion
11. The Radio
12. Facility
13. Falling at Two Speeds
14. Fault Index
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