Cinema Cinema are a Brooklyn-based drums and guitar duo that has been described with terms like “art-punk”, “experi-metal”, and “avant-punk.” Their iTunes genre is listed as “punk/noise rock”. They are usually loud and fast, and their songs often split the difference between abrasive and catchy. In 2019, however, they released CCXMD, an album where woodwind specialist Matt Darriau joined the duo. The three spent several hours in the studio creating entirely improvised music, and the results leaned toward the abrasive. There was very little structure to the music, just three people reacting to each other on their instruments. The record drew comparisons to the chaotic sound of free jazz.
CCXMDII collects the remainder of that session, and the more relaxed vibe of this album shows that there was some intentionality in the selection process of what track went on which release. That vibe doesn’t, however, make this record an easy listen. The trio opens the album with “A Life of Its Own”, an 18-minute piece of abstract music that never settles into sounding like a song. Darriau begins the track with simple, low flute sounds, while guitarist Ev Gold strums reverb-soaked chords and drummer Paul Claro mostly accents with light cymbal rolls and crashes.
The music drifts through different soundscapes as Darriau switches to clarinets and Claro lightly plays on his toms. At one point, Gold starts muttering and moaning, giving the music a more sinister feel. Darriau picks up a saxophone a bit after this and starts honking and squeaking away, like a sixth-grader in the beginning band. About 14 minutes in, Gold starts to get more atmospheric on his guitar, with some fast strumming and echo effects. But the music never really picks up the tempo throughout the whole piece, just drifting along slowly until Darriau squeaks his way into the end.
“A Life of Its Own” is a lot, but it’s simultaneously not a lot because not much happens. It would be a pretty listenable piece of background ambiance if it weren’t for Gold’s unsettling moaning vocals and Darriau’s sax squawks. By opening the record with it, though, the track makes the rest of the improvised music on CCXMDII seem relatively tame. “Cloud 2” and “Continued”, at 92 and 132 seconds long, respectively, are much easier to digest. The former features jagged, echoing guitar notes, Claro playing tight rolls all across his drumset, and Darriau throwing in trilling flutes. The latter is slow and a bit creepy, with gentle clarinet, subtle drum pounding, and ominous-sounding guitar bursts.
It isn’t until track four, “Bratislava”, that the group find something resembling a groove. At nine minutes plus, it’s still a bit lengthy, but it opens with an actual guitar riff, and Darriau is clearly listening and playing off of it. Claro picks up on the guitar riff and plays a beat that locks right. With that groove established, the trio then explores it, letting it sit in the pocket at times and pushing it in new directions at others. About halfway through the piece, Claro picks up speed, and the other two follow right along. This intensity lasts for a couple of minutes before the trio brings the energy back down and finishes out with a very similar groove to the opening.
The other track that is songlike is “Trigger”, which also opens with a genuine guitar riff from Gold. Claro picks up on it immediately, and the two bop along while Darriau lays back for a minute before really joining in with more squawking sounds. While Claro and Gold are even more locked in on this one, Darriau doesn’t quite seem to find the space to add anything significant to the groove. He opts to howl in the upper end of his range, for the most part, just doing his own thing. It’s only when Gold, more than halfway through the track, essentially starts to play a rhythm guitar part that Darriau finally gets in sync.
The other two tracks on CCXMDII are also more abstract. “Crack of Dawn” drifts along for nearly seven minutes of sound effects without ever coalescing into anything. “Cloud 4” closes out the album with gentle, drifting guitars and breathy woodwind sounds. It slides very smoothly back around to the beginning of “A Life of Its Own” if you have the record on repeat, so that’s an excellent way to keep it going if that’s your thing.
CCXMDII isn’t an album for casual listeners. People who are open to very abstract music may find this a fascinating document of improvisation. Folks who don’t mind squeaky, squawky saxophones and clarinets could probably put this on as decent background chill-out kind of music. “Bratislava” is the clear highlight of the record because it best captures the trio’s improvisational adventurousness with musical ideas. It’s cool to hear the usually noisy Cinema Cinema doing something so completely different, but it’s hard to think of this album as much more than a curiosity.