Boring Like A Drill.

This ain’t drone. It’s slow and monophonic, with no obvious change in pitch over the time it takes you to normally breathe in and out, but it plays out like an orchestrated melody. It’s claimed that the three pieces on Scott McLaughlin’s we are environments for each other (Huddersfield Contemporary Records) came about over the course of ten years’ worth of collaboration with violinist Mira Benjamin and pianist Zubin Kanga, and listening to it again I can believe this. Each piece required meticulous attention to detail to present it without noticeable blemish; here, the content is all contained within the music’s surface, with precision-engineered technique to make the finest distinctions between texture and colour. The album opens with the most recent and fully-developed piece, a sublime thirty-five minute stretch of music titled we are environments for each other [trio]. The trio in question here is Benjamin on electric violin, Kanga on piano with electromagnetic resonators; the resonators acting as an emergent third force. Without ever becoming dense, the musicians follow a thin line that keeps changing its substance, e-bowed piano strings and amplified violin strings each giving a tone that is slightly diffuse about the edges. The resonances of the strings set off a surrounding radiation of additional tones that don’t sound like the usual harmonic overtones, but instead create new types of sound that resemble electronically synthesised waveforms. Paradoxically, the musical shaping of each event stills sounds very natural, making something that should be familiar enough feel fresh and new without making the technology conspicuous. The two earlier pieces, each sub-twenty minutes, are relatively less refined but almost as striking. Benjamin’s acoustic violin playing on the endless mobility of listening is augmented by McLaughlin’s live electronic processing to elongate the effects of her bowing as much as add harmonic resonance. The aim of transforming timbre by exploiting the instrument’s acoustic properties is present in a less developed form, latching onto sine-tone upper harmonics or letting the grind of strings turn beating frequencies into a pulse. The fact that drones are not part of the equation becomes clearer here, where the performer’s gestures are more overt. At the start of in the unknown there is already a script for transcendence, Kanga plays haunting phrases on a prepared piano swimming in reverb, but the struck notes soon peter out into sourceless tones from the magnetic resonators, lapsing into long passages of sounds sublimated into almost pure electronics, only occasionally propelled by piano keys.

The Greyfade label is starting up a Folio edition: hardcover books with an accompanying music download (music also available separately). The first release is Three Cellos, an acoustic realisation of Kenneth Kirschner’s electronic composition July 8, 2017 for the aforesaid instruments. Joseph Branciforte arranged the piece for live cellos, multitracked by Christopher Gross. The book is a seemingly exhaustive account by Kirschner about the compositional process behind the original work, from its conceptual origins, tracing through the emerging implications and complications in producing a finalised work, followed by an equally thorough discussion by Branciforte of Kirschner’s work and how to render it as an acoustic performance. Gross also gets in a couple of pages about playing the thing. Kirschner is a prolific composer of electronic music, producing large and boldly conceived works that refuse to be complacent about their foundational premises. July 8, 2017 was made with the use of algorithmic processes; it’s a pitch-based work made out of transformations of a reduced set of six pitch-classes from the usual twelve-tone scale. The predominant theme is one of tension and release, opening with a minor ninth that resolves to the octave which becomes the recurring theme throughout the work, transposed to other near-octaves on various pitches, all played in counterpoint like an illusory canon between two or three cellos at a time. The forty-minute work is divided into multiple cells in a seemingly modular form: Gross accurately likens the work immediately to a kaleidoscope. Each section feels like passing through a room full of mirrors, only to find that each successive room is also equally mirrored. For this acoustic version, with the reliance on the most angsty of dissonances as the basis of the work, your own headspace at the time of listening will play a part in whether you find its prolonged, reiterative excesses exhilarating, wearying or ludicrous. Kirschner’s essay maintains some consciousness of these aspects of composition and how much of the substantive features of the work can be out of your hands even as you create it; regarding this arrangement, he subtitles his chapter “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vibrato”. The use of cellos rebounding off each other adds to the overall sturm und drang impression, but then Gross’s demonstrative use of vibrato throughout makes another comment on the electronic original: Kirschner was using sampled cello and wondering about the tensions and limitations of working with sampled instruments versus the real. Gross’s vibrato is prominent but alive and variable, responsive to the moment, while sample patches of acoustic instruments are naggingly uniform, pushing timbre to become a mere vehicle for pitch. Branciforte’s arrangement, with its emphasis on elastic phrasing, and Gross’s generous interpretation interrogate Kirschner’s composition even as they may appear to elevate it.

Filed under: Music, Reviews by Ben.H
Tags: Joseph Branciforte, Kenneth Kirschner, Scott McLaughlin