Earl Howard - Pele's Tears

All Music Guide

Earl Howard is a blind composer. The blindness part doesn't matter much to anyone but him. In his liner notes to this recording, he wants to make it clear that he can only imagine what birds look like. When he was younger their songs were unattached, imageless voices. Since that time, he's touched birds and can connect the sounds to the wild imaginings of his mind. Of the five pieces here, three are completely electro-acoustic in design, engaging minimal and maximal sonic textures manipulated through modulators and tape recorders. The first two words, "Hell" and "Pele's Tears," offer an aural vision of what it might be like to be detached, to be out of the range of touch, sight, smell -- anything but sound. They are eerie yet fascinating, they move and drift and take ominous shapes but never advance further than the imagination stage, because they aren't connected to anything, which makes them sonic monoliths with seemingly endless depths. Think Paul Schutze at his most abstract and you get an idea. On the last two pieces, a pair of quartets recorded live in Köln, Howard enlists tuba player Melvyn Poore, saxophonist Frank Gratkowski, and bassist Hans Schneider in some group improvisation. While these works are mildly interesting as play pieces, as elementary engagements of the spirit of collective anarchy, they don't add anything to the already sublime statements made earlier.

- Thom Jurek, All Music Guide