Vergessen

Album Review

Although Belgian post-minimalist composer Wim Mertens did not begin recording his own music until the age of 28, once he started, he quickly made up for lost time. One of three Mertens releases from 1982, Vergessen is a brief album of pulsating melodies explored through a variety of arrangements and moods. This is not simple droning process music, although Mertens' debts to the early work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass are obvious. Mertens' skill, besides his ability to write surprisingly melodic lead lines over his hypnotic patterns, is in arrangement. Each of the six pieces here features an entirely unique group of instruments, from the simple four-hand piano exercise "4 Mains" to the eccentric pairing of skirling piccolo and growling crumhorn on the divine "Mildly Skeeming." The stop-start opening of the manic, almost circus-like "Inergys" has the wit of John Cage or Erik Satie. A lengthy reprise of "Inergys" closes the album in a much more subdued but no less fascinating fashion. In between, the additive "Multiple 12" is perhaps the most pedestrian and derivative piece on the album, but even it benefits from the intriguing textures of Frans Vos' overdubbed, intertwining viola parts and another appearance by Mertens' crumhorn, which sounds not unlike the drone of a bass bagpipe here. The album's loveliest track, "Circular Breathing," features an achingly beautiful soprano sax part somewhat reminiscent of Philip Glass' "Facades." As with all early Wim Mertens releases, Vergessen was originally released under the group name Soft Verdict before being reissued later under Mertens' own name.