1984: The Forward Process

Straight from the first notes, reality blurs and form becomes fluid. On The Forward Process Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe turns a literary notion of time into a working musical system. He sets his guitar alongside French saxophonist Sakina Abdou and English turntablist Mariam Rezaei on cycles that rarely resolve in the conventional sense. Under the moniker 1984—named after the birth year of the three protagonists, but with Orwellian echoes—the three traverse five pieces by Van Cauwenberghe intercut with three collectives.

The guitarist draws inspiration from a passage in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, in which a revolutionary theory of time fuels a composer's imagination to generate: "instruments each playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts." Intrigued by what such music might sound like, Van Cauwenberghe put together the band to explore the possibilities.

The idea recalls Anthony Braxton's use of recurring motifs in works like "Composition 159." But Van Cauwenberghe, no stranger to Braxton having recorded both solo and ensemble renditions of the composer's Ghost Trance Musics, extends the concept yet further. Not only do he and Abdou orbit in repeated patterns, but he gives Rezaei's turntables a pivotal structural role. While she sometimes channels electronic beats, more often she introduces pre-recorded samples of her band mates specially written by Van Cauwenberghe.

The results can beguile, like at the start of "Inhabitation Of Time," where it seems that the guitarist duets with himself, except that one of the voices slows and accelerates, evoking the elastic phrasing of Ry Cooder's pedal steel guitar blues. But they can also bewilder, as on the title track where fragmented saxophone and guitar phrases propagate from a mix further thickened by Rezaei's deft manipulations. Occasionally the transformations occur in plain sight. On "Takver" Abdou's mellow tones entwine with a languid second horn in a woozy embrace, paced by ringing guitar, before the layers multiply.

Interspersed through the program, three group improvisations under the title "Urras" (named after a planet in Le Guin's book) dispense with even elusive structure in favor of abrupt plunges, into dense electronic soundscapes, but also on the third iteration into hazy reverberations, suggesting heat without intensity. Such pieces testify to a shared vision, sometimes amorphous, disconcerting and appropriately alien, but realized without a hint of ego. Much like the album as a whole, which forges a vibrant organic statement from arcane theory.