Originally released separately as Verbatim (1996) and Verbatim Flesh & Blood (2000). Re-issued in MVORL limited edition in 2002. With Gerry Hemingway (percussion), Mark Dresser (bass), and Phil Minton (voice). Third and fourth and final cd from the Say No project. Assembled on computer (3) and recorded live in Gent, Belgium (4). [Seeland 522]
Bob Ostertag writes:
Next, I put the live recording back into the computer, blew it into bits once again, and assembled a new composition, Verbatim, out of the debris. The group premiered the live version of Verbatim at the Taktlos Festival in March 1996 in Switzerland, ,and the which was released in 1997.
Finally, I created a score of Verbatim, and the live group toured it extensively and recorded the concert version, Verbatim, Flesh & Blood, in Gent, Belgium in January 1998. This is the last CD in the series, the culmination of seven years of work.
My interests in this project were several. First, it allowed me to apply the compositional techniques common to musique concrete (sculpting and shaping a composition in the actual audio medium) to the work of composing for live ensemble.
Second, I was interested in creating a new sort of bi-directional flow between composer and instrumentalist, in which the result of one's work immediately becomes the raw material of the other's.
Finally, I wanted to use technology to alter the relationship between the instrumentalists and their own music. Each musician was asked to learn parts derived directly from his own improvisations. In effect I was sitting each player down in front of a mirror image of his own music. But the mirror was curved into prisms and lenses which were the results of the transformations I had made in the process of creating the "band" from the original solos.
"Thoroughly attuned to life in the mid-90s, [Say No More] is more than an experiment and much more than merely sensational. Astonishingly, the music never seems artificial. With acute sensitivity, Ostertag catches the strengths of his partners and lifts them up to a new level, magnifying the skill and intensity of these extraordinary virtuosos. The border between live improvisation and computerized manipulation blurs and if finally made irrelevant by the music which results."
-- Jazzthetik (Germany)"A trip into another dimension of music, and into a world as full of clashes and conflict as the one in which we live."
-- Forum (Germany)