Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine
Ben Townsend/Nate May
Questionable Records, 2021
NORTH RIVER MILLS, WV—Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine, the new split release from Ben Townsend and Nate May on Questionable Records, is a sweeping and surreal examination of a single old tune from the mountains.
On the first side, Ben Townsend (fiddle) joins forces with his brother Jim (piano) along with local old-time couple Sam and Joe Hermann (hammered dulcimer and fiddle) to give "Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine" a hypnotizing, expansive treatment, an outgrowth of a performance of Terry Riley's minimalist classic "In C" by old-time musicians at the Clifftop festival that Townsend organized in 2014. “On one hand it was like a theme and variations on the tune," writes Jim Townsend, "and on the other hand it was like a complicated puzzle to put together."
The second side is composer Nate May's psychological exploration of the tune's medium and message. Beginning with a slow sculpting of white noise that settles on the shore of Bonaparte's river, the soundscape is gently displaced by a small hive of Fender Rhodes pianos before climaxing in a blinding, buzzing polyphonic digitization of the material from side one. May writes, "The last part happened when I was first learning Ableton. I dropped in Ben's audio and somehow it ended up glitched out and sort of bitcrushed but with a metronomic pulse. I started tweaking and layering it and it produced these stunning golden chords with bits of the melody cascading through the voices."
With references reaching from West Virginia's Hammons family to William Basinski and Tristan Perich, the album joins Bonnie Prince Billy, Brian Harnetty, Anna and Elizabeth, and others in the growing body of work at the intersection of the traditional and the experimental. Like these artists, it is the outcome of decades of respectful study of tradition merged with an approach to the present that seeds alien landscapes with earthly memory.
Both raised in West Virginia, Townsend and May first met at a shared bill organized by Anna Roberts-Gevalt (Anna & Elizabeth) at the Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn. Deeply knowledgeable of the mountain musics of West Virginia, Townsend had been exploring minimalist refractions of traditional material, while May, enrolled in Yale's doctoral program in composition, had developed an interest in both the roots and misunderstandings of Appalachian music.
For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Nate May at nathaniel.p.may@gmail.com.
Excerpts
(If this embed doesn’t work, click here to listen on Soundcloud).
Full album on bandcamp
Release Date: 15 December 2021
Formats: cassette and digital
Bandcamp link:
https://questionablerecords.bandcamp.com/album/bonaparte-crossing-the-rhine
Ben Townsend
Born and raised in Romney, West Virginia, multi instrumentalist, Ben Townsend has studied, taught and performed Appalachian traditional music extensively in the United States and abroad. Under the mentorship of banjo players such as Riley Baugus and Ron Mullennex and fiddlers, Dave Bing, Joe Herrmann and Earl White, Townsend has studied a variety of old-time traditions ranging from the archaic, haunting fiddle of his home to the Round Peak music of North Carolina and Virginia and the Bluegrass of East Kentucky and Ohio. Currently Townsend is working with modern synthesis techniques in an endeavor to bridge the gap between tradition and technology. His most recent project has been a collaboration with his brother Jim, an accomplished pianist and composer, under the name Tabernacle. All recent works can be found on Townsend’s label, Questionable Records.
Other work: Magisk Mjukglass (feat Cara Lauzon)
Nate May
Nate May is a composer, performer, and educator whose interest in human ecosystems has impelled explorations of a wide variety of sounds and interactions. Raised in Huntington, West Virginia, much of his work stems from a “fascination, love, and respect for the people” of Appalachia (Soapbox), including his oratorio State, the result of interviews he conducted with Appalachian migrants on a fellowship from the Berea Sound Archives, and “Licorice Parikrama,” a networked performance featuring a live conference call with West Virginians affected by the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. Nate is a keyboardist and improviser as well as an electronic musician and producer, collaborating with Paris-based choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu on the world-touring work Spiral and indigenous experimental trio Khoi Khonnexion on their debut album Kalahari Waits, recorded during a year in South Africa. He has served as a teaching artist with the American Composers Orchestra and on faculty at Montclair State University, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and at the Walden School. In 2021 he founded Synthase, an online school for music creators.
Other work: Live in Baltimore with the voice of Hazel Dickens