Glenn Kotche - Adams: Ilimaq (2015)

Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams always speaks with reverence about capturing "the tone within the noise," and if any of his recent work can be said to take that mission directly to heart, it's Ilimaq. A true electro-acoustic recording that channels the energy, passion and precision of Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, Ilimaq (which loosely translates from the native Alaskan Inupiaq language as "spirit journeys") maps a vivid, phantasmagorical progression through liquid cascades of percussion, otherworldly ambient soundscapes, harmonic dissonance, melodic convergence and almost everything that's musicallyand sonicallypossible in between.

Of course, as the old adage goes, the "map" is not necessarily the territorybut in the right hands, it can come pretty close. Although they both live and work in different, almost diametrically opposed worlds of music, Adams and Kotche didn't just choose to collaborate on a whim. Back in 2008, while Wilco was on tour in Alaska, Kotche personally emailed Adams and asked to meet. It soon came to light that he had been following Adams' work for years; by the same token, Adams' own background as a rock drummer gave him a uniquely informed glimpse of what Kotche had in mind. (As Adams says in the liner notes to Ilimaq, "...in Glenn Kotche, I've found the drummer I always imagined I could be.")

In a review of Kotche's Carnegie Hall performance of Ilimaq for the 2014 Ecstatic Music Festival, the New York-based blog Baeble Music described the experience as "...48 minutes of an almost violent but passionate performance. The one-man percussion orchestra was sonically heightened by the digital delays that blasted through the speakers. Though we were underground, Ilimaq seemed to seep into the New York City streets."

This is the other John Adams, John Luther Adams, who, in his early 60s, is finally beginning to attract the international attention his thoughtful and strikingly original music deserves. Adams s profound immersion in the natural world, his horror at the damage done to it, and his efforts to create what he has described as an ecology of composition suggest him as the musical equivalent of the great US poet Gary Snyder: both are important artists who put their work at the service of what they see and cherish around them. Ilimaq is a 45-minute percussion solo with electronics, first performed in 2012. The title means spirit journey in the native Alaskan language Inupiaq Adams lived in Alaska for almost 40 years, but now divides his time between New York and Mexico. The piece was composed in collaboration with Glenn Kotche, from the Chicago-based band Wilco, who has previously worked with new music ensembles such as eighth blackbird and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The electronic backdrop a mix of sampled sounds and digital delays of Kotche's performance creates an all-enveloping aural environment in which the live solo playing is the focus. The predominant sounds steadily evolve as the work goes on. The opening sections are characterised by low regular pulsings, while more metallic sounds combine with the trickling electronics in the centre of the work, and a much wider range of drums and cymbals is heard towards its ethereal close. The careful way in which these sounds are graded sometimes recalls the solo and ensemble percussion pieces of Iannis Xenakis, but the impact of Adams's music, with its ever changing auras of electronic transformations, is much less physical and far more subtle than those. Adams likens the role of the percussionist in leading the way through the soundscapes he creates in Ilimaq to that of a shaman in the Inuit tradition, conducting journeys to and from the spirit world. And from what are often the most basic rhythmic elements, he and Kotche create a work of great power and often surprising, stark beauty. **** --Guardian, 18/11/15

From fierce rhythmic reptitions on the drum to more free-form, ambient soundscapes, the work is scored for three stations of percussion instruments heard alongside field recordings and digital processing of Kotche's playing. This wonderful work is much enhanced in the DVD audio 5,1 surround version. Performance **** Recording **** --BBC Music Magazine, Mar '16