MILLER, S.: Apnee / Mirror Inside / Sainte Victoire / Self Portrait / Desire Also Has Its Own Geography / Dressing Up (Zeitgeist, Miller, Costaglioli) (Scott Miller - Philippe Costaglioli)

Album review

Poet Philippe Costaglioli, composer Scott Miller, and the four musicians of Zeitgeist have joined forces on Shape Shifting, a mysterious and murky collaboration that disturbs more than it appeals, and baffles more than it moves. Costaglioli's theatrical recitation of his dark, confessional poetry -- read directly in English, French, and Catalan, or incoherently scattered in electronically altered phonetic fragments -- is accompanied by repetitive patterns, washes of clusters, random pointillistic gestures, pugnacious percussive textures, and chaotic improvisations that defy simple analysis in their density. Miller's score -- or Zeitgeist's extrapolation of it -- is overloaded with tricks that have been stock-in-trade since the 1960s, and handled with more sensitivity and craft by many other composers. For music composed in 2005, this album seems nostalgic for a bygone era, but utterly lacks the urgency, power, and originality that characterizes the best of the avant-garde. Because of its pretensions to seriousness, Shape Shifting may appeal most strongly to adventurous adolescents who might sympathize with Costaglioli's self-absorbed ruminations. But other listeners may cringe at his preening tone and feel somewhat annoyed by the lifelessness and clumsiness of Miller's and Zeitgeist's dismally imitative music.
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