MUSIC REVIEW : E.A.R. Unit Wraps Up Its Season With Absurdist Howler

No one expects conventionality from the California E.A.R. Unit. Last November, for instance, the Unit opened its season at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Amnon Wolman’s “No U Turn,” requiring the musicians to don handcuffs and tap out rhythms.

Wednesday night at LACMA, in the final work of the season, the group again dispensed with their instruments, and with standard-issue concert decorum. This time, the vehicle was Gerhard Stabler’s Dadaistic music-theater piece “druber,” in which the players fitfully move around the stage and auditorium, screaming, grunting and gurgling.

Meanwhile, a tenor (Charles Lane, apparently in the altogether behind a screen) produces relatively pure, pear-shaped tones and a cellist (Lynn Angebrandt) remains a frozen silent partner. As interpreted by the Unit, the end result was a sometimes dread- laced but mostly deadpan bit of absurdist comedy.

Nothing else on the program was nearly so audacious. “Irish Coffee,” an arrangement of a Finnish folk tune, had a lilting, peculiar folk air, but was of questionable relevance in a new music concert. The world premiere of “Mute Dance” by Victoria Jordanova, from the former Yugoslavia, was far more impressive. A 16th-Century folk tune, played by clarinetist James Rohrig, is carefully wrapped in 20th-Century manners--spiky piano shards, a prerecorded drone and exotic percussion cadences.

By Mathew Rosenblum’s admission, the jangly microtonal palette of his “Circadian Rhythms,” deftly handled by the Unit, was inspired by Javanese music, proto-minimalist composer La Monte Young and art-punk band Sonic Youth, all of which are detectable, though not entirely seamless in the weaving. Chinese-born Chen Yi’s “Near Distance” juggles atonal western vocabulary with Asian sensibilities of space and inflection, a balance well-articulated by the players.

The concert, and the season, affirmed that juggling attitudes and exploring new terrain are key to the continuing success of this stalwart new music group.