On March 26th I had the pleasure of attending a performance of a Chicago-based duo called Coppice at the Fleisenberg Floft. The duo performed an impressively enthralling set. Just as equally impressive as the duo's performance was how the sounds themselves were produced. Coppice shares a single table slab on which Noé Cuéllar plays his shruti box with a minimal array of preparations, plastic tubing, a metal funnel, and the like, while Joseph Kramer manipulates a sampler and a boom box with the aid of 2 walkie talkies. The duo shares a single directional mic, through which Kramer further manipulates the sound produced by himself and his compatriot as well as manipulating the room noise itself. It is a delicate collaboration that takes on a nearly meditative quality as the duo takes turns initiating musical events and reacting to one another.
The set was comprised of just 3 pieces, Seam, The Flavor of Missing Mortar, and Mild Grey Lustre. The common thread of the set was a balance of highly structured and varied musical material with a loose and improvisational presentation, with undeniably distinct sections being unspooled at the duo's discretion and whim. The pitch material generated from Cuéllar was sublimely colored, employing slow oscillating melodic lines, tone clusters, and even the delicate sound of air passing through the shruti box's bellows. Kramer produced a hypnotic array of color as well, gesticulating the walkie talkies over the boom box to produce otherworldly tone colors. It is easy to become engrossed in their performance and lose any sense of time.
The standout piece, The Flavor of Missing Mortar, is a perfectly structured work for the duo, with a meticulously paced crescendo that culminates in an astonishingly loud and thick dynamic climax. In the piece Coppice weaves a well-conceived musical narrative with a strikingly alien grammar. The piece is undeniably mesmerizing.
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