Ro(b)//ert Lundberg


by-passing-upon is the latest addition to the ongoing work of bassist and composer Ro(b)//ert Lundberg. Built from a palette of double bass, cello, clarinet, drums, synthesizer, masking tape, and water-filled vessels, the piece merges sonorous ambient tones with driving rhythms and flowing, bubbling patterns. Prompted by a score both graphic and notated, as well as stage props including multi-colored tape, ladders, a kettle, and beach balls, Lundberg’s ensemble realizes a work existing in the fluid space between pre-composed and improvised music. 

“by-passing-upon continues my long-running watery fascinations, here with a central fixation on the curb stop,” shares Lundberg. Curb stops are small metal covers in sidewalks and yards covering the shut off valve in a water pipe flowing to a building. In the US, curb stops also mark the division between state- and privately-owned pipes, acting as a physical manifestation of property lines. “In noticing, reading, photographing, moving and music-making, curb stops have acted as reminders to ponder the ways water moves with and against real and imaginary boundaries created by humans.”

The record opens with a meditative hum and hypnotic swells of cello. The tension between rigid structure and malleable clouds of sound is teased throughout as sweeping strings give way to rhythmically layered and inspired exaltations. Melodies enter, motifs move through the ensemble, the groove constricts yet carries possibility.

Lundberg’s score presented performers with musical ideas in the form of flows, pools, and clouds – prompting playful exploration of these different states of motivic being. Sometimes the pools settle and the clouds clear to reveal beautifully sparse moments that function more as a conversation between instruments. These lulls serve as a foil to the busier parts of the record, a refreshing slow sip.

The musicians craft their individual parts sympathetically with an ear on the whole throughout. Lundberg made clear that, “while the score provides fairly circumscribed pitch and rhythmic material, I chose my collaborators knowing they would thrive in these bounds – and occasionally ignore them to wonderful effect.” Lundberg instructed that “we all flow through the same system, the same pipe. Though occasionally, one instrument might follow a leak, an exuberant rupture, to briefly break free from the band.”

These ruptures were furthered by layering improvised solos over the initial ensemble recording. Each of the four musicians played these solos to open the live performance that ultimately provided the source material for by-passing-upon. That live performance featured three movement artists alongside the musicians, all animating a stage filled with objects meant to bring the infrastructure of the score to four dimensional life. Lundberg notes that “one of my interests in this project is bringing the score to the audience. Acknowledging it not only as a document carrying information for the performers, but also as an aesthetic object that can help expand a listener and viewer’s experience of what I’m sharing.”

Boisterous moments fill with distorted tones crackling in between steady lines of bass, roiling percussion, or a wandering clarinet. Finally, things cool into fading layered tones. The record ends much like it began, circling back as an ouroboros. Not doomed to repetition, though. Instead offering an opportunity to notice the shifting context. Acknowledging the form, but also highlighting the possibility for change in what appears familiar.

The album features contributions from Chicago musicians Lia Kohl (cello & synthesizer), Jeff Kimmel (bass clarinet & synthesizer) and Sam Scranton (percussion), as well as movement artists Nina Vroemen, Jasmine Mendoza, Zachary Nicol (unfurling tape, shaking vessels, spritzing sprayers, and boiling kettles). It was recorded live at Constellation by Nolan Chin, and mixed & mastered by John Dieterich (Deerhoof).

The accompanying artist book expands the visual and thematic world of the project, inviting audiences to flip through 100 of Lundberg’s photographs with an accompanying poetic narrative unfolding line by line, page by page.