The Wet Ink Ensemble perform Glossolalia / Lines on Black on Carrier Records. The release features two extended works by Ensemble composers Sam Pluta (Lines on Black) and Alex Mincek (Glossolalia)...

Glossolalia, commonly described as "speaking in tongues," is a term originating from the Greek "glossa," meaning language, and "lalia,” meaning "speak.” In Alex Mincek’s Glossolalia, the concept of language is broadened to include modes of musical expression beyond linguistics – harmonic language, melodic language, rhythmic language, gestural language, instrumental language, etc – each subjected to the same types of modification (phonological, morphological, syntactic) found in linguistic glossolalia.

Sam Pluta’s Lines on Black was written as a love letter to the composer / performer / improvisers of the Wet Ink Ensemble. with each movement of the piece composed to engage the musicianship and personality of individual members or small subsets of the ensemble, resulting in a music whose subject is as much the musicians playing it as it is the larger dialogic arc of the sonic structure.

Yes, I get it. Throw away centuries of classical music training, knowledge and structure and experiment with form, sound and presentation. The thing is, naive bright-eyed Fine Art students have been trotting out stuff like this for decades.

What we end up with is yet another collection of electronically manipulated sounds which just didn't stir anything in me. If I'm going to listen to music for pleasure it should at least excite me in some way - not bore me and force me to constantly roll my eyes and utter "Oh, please!" But here we are.

The fact that this album is made up of two compositions by two composers... yet you'll struggle to tell (or care) which is produced by which... is all the proof you need to show you that this isn't clever, or genre defying... It's just cliched and rather old hat.

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Darren Rea