Featured review by famed music critic Percival Cart, excerpted from his biography on Pierre Amounet:
“On March 8th, 2016, Amounet would release his - and possibly the world of avant-garde music’s - masterwork: Good For The Clock (So Hyped, 2016), a sextuple album and tour de force of solo mandolin virtuosity. Each of the six discs is dedicated to a single complex and meandering suite, each granting its own new manual on how music is to be perceived for the rest of time.
As with the other works by masters in a similar vein, like Anthony Braxton’s For Alto (Delmark 1968) or Saxophone Improvisations Series F (America 1972) for example, Good For The Clock (So Hyped, 2016) is the result of years and years of preparation, not a single stroke of luck. One can assume that Amounet began preparing for the sextuple record he projected to be his masterpiece as long as a decade before its release, and the years of technical mastery and philosophical profundity culminate here, flowing effortlessly through all six suites. One does not achieve such transcendental heights with such little effort without a lifetime of preparation.
The album opens with Pronation (30 minutes), a meticulously crafted piece that sets the mood for the hours of music to come. The ten seconds that begin the piece serve as a triumphant manifesto - a mission statement of sorts. But on the contrary, after the first few minutes the musician displays a very rare and calculated use of silence to maximum effect. The mood is subdued, but the silence between the notes rings with a chorus of absent emotions. Somehow, 20 or so minutes later, the musician has mustered up the remains into a jubilant fanfare.
Then begins the second and longest suite on the album, Exhortation (50 minutes), a delicate soliloquy of sorrowful confessions that begins like a funeral dirge but ends like an elated sermon. The energy is elevated by each layer of tender emotions. Rarely has an artist reached this level of vulnerability.
The third disc, which consists of Resignation (35 minutes), is the last of the first half of the album, and consists of an avant-garde work that incorporates subtle use of background noises and extended range techniques (namely percussive pick techniques, to which Amounet can be credited with adding to the canon of avant-garde mandolin methodology). Each piece seems to pick up where the last left off, only to throw the listener for yet another loop. This piece’s deeply rooted experimentalism would be far less profound if not preceded by such fragile confessions.
Revision (45 minutes) is a new beginning. It is a mood piece in the same vein as Pronation, but presents a very different perspective. Revision is, in a way, the alter ego of Pronation.
The final hours of the album are the most abstract. Occlusion (45 minutes) is a descent into madness. By this time it feels like a completely different album. This is not the Pierre Amounet that declared those divine first ten seconds. Occlusion is a piece that questions the use of a steady tempo and blurs the distinction between different meters. Occasionally phrases are repeated and stuttered, as if by a mad preacher struggling to articulate the words on his page, his hands shaking out of rage and joy. At times it even sounds like Amounet is failing to perform his own composition, but this is only out of the pure desperation, bordering on hysteria, with which it was written. Every tempo change and repeated phrase is absolutely intentional and creates a sense of urgency, becoming most apparent at the 21:50 minute mark, and dilating from there.
Ascension (30 minutes) is the concluding paragraph to Amounet’s journey. It begins with a baroque theme that matches or even surpasses the works of Bach, perhaps the most anthemic of the entire album, and ends with a finale that matches or even surpasses the magnificence and enlightenment of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, all of it done by one man with one mandolin. The last note rings into eternity. Not to mention that the entire piece is performed with a maniacal level of precision.
These pieces are not traditional by any means. They are not easy to perform. But Amounet performs without flaw, and he has every right to be placed above Chris Thile as the leading mandolinist of our time. When the dust of our civilization has cleared and only our art is left behind, Good For The Clock (So Hyped, 2016) will earn its due recognition in the history books. Although, frankly, I believe that our race is simply not yet ready to receive this work. It will take time for the rest of the world to realize that one of the greatest pieces of music ever made was sitting right before them the whole time."
