Jackman 'Flames of Fire' CD
December 2024
Another in Die Stadt's Jackman/Organum series, continuing his persuit of the monolithic shifting structure.
Review by Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly : Music and musical releases can be controversial for many reasons. Lyrical content, shocking covers, too loud, too quiet: David Jackman’s music is controversial for none of these reasons. His music isn’t noisy or silent, with no lyrical content or a shocking cover. I am not on any discussion group online and never was, but I can imagine a discussion with the topic: “Is David Jackman doing the same thing over and over again?”. I don’t know the answer, but I can guess. We can say the last few releases (and I am discounting his Organum Electronics releases; they are in a different league) contain the same musical elements. I copy from my last review, “A drone, Shruti-like, some low gong sound, the occasional bang on the piano, a church bell and some crows flying overhead”. The crows may have flown away, but the other elements are there. I also wrote, “The drone is continuous here; the others appear irregularly. The whole work is slow and majestic. The music has a funeral aspect, like a black-and-white picture from an Edgar Allen Poe story. It is very similar to much of his recent work, and it is hard to figure out the difference(s). All of this fits my pop-art theory. I love this mystique and playing around with similar ideas and notions. I am sure this mystery will never be unravelled”
A single disc credited to Jackman, ‘Flames Of Fire’? There are more shruti-like drones, but no church bells and the gong is buried in the mix. The drones are heavier on this release, pressing down like a massive, tighter-knit weight. There is an orchestral darkness about this, an enormous cloud without too many details and a more machine-like proposition. It all works out quite differently while using seemingly the same sound materials. This is also very dark music, but with a rather menacing undercurrent, like the soundtrack of a Battefield movie, but after the fight is over. We only see the endless remains of tanks, weapons and bodies. It’s a bleak picture and the soundtrack for a gloomy time.
