Search - Paul Lansky, Brad Garton, Andrew Milburn :: CDCM Computer Music Series, Vol.5 -- Winham Laboratory at Princeton University

Absolutely worth the listen

Mark Grindell | Shipley,West Yorkshire | 09/27/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are some pieces on this CD which will probably really last the test of time. I have to say that in the last twenty years I was getting very cynical about the state of American contemporary music, believing that European music was perhaps the only medium worth a serious investment in time. I'm not too sure of that thesis now.The pieces are based to a large extent on a non-classical inheritance (with the exception of still life with piano), and are probably from the op-art school. Take for example, the very listenable "night machines".This piece is intensely visual. You can imagine walklng past a street in the rain, in a futuristic city, where the electronics designers and architects have ganged up and produced these "semi-intelligent" squashy sort of monoliths dotting the side of the street. They wait umtil the twilight, then chatter to each other, imitating the disco music from down the road. At times they sound nearly human. They only exist, though, to entertain the travellers in the darkness and the rain.As for "approximate rhythms", this piece attempts what I last heard in a piece called "the book of love", similarly for percussion. Not just a stage for minimalist transitions, continuously occupying the ear with tiny variations, this piece contains it's own tiny universe of sounds and places. The last section of the piece is totally surprising and engaging, almost like a water painting of a temporary paradise. Beautiful and shot through with many colours.Wasting is so strange, original and, well, disturbing, I just can't think of any class of works it is a member of! I won't try to descrbe it, except to liken it to something By Samuel Beckett I once encountered, called "the unnameable".Still life with piano is a slowly uncoiling work with a soundscape rather similar to Harry Partch. Lots of slowly decaying gentle sounds with anharmonic accompanyments. I like this, but it is best to hear it when you just about to fall asleep...!The other two pieces may well appeal to other folks but Elmore isn't too ingenious... to my ear, but that's me. Idle Chatter is constructed too much for the pop market for my tastes, but is even so engaging and curious.Contraption is worth a few repeats and fits in closely with approximate rhythms.These pieces have really nothing to do with the world occupied by Jacob Druckmann and Milton Babbitt, but are non the less worth looking into quite a bit."

Mostly academic esoterica

Steve Benner | Lancaster, UK | 09/11/2001

(2 out of 5 stars)

"CDCM's fifth volume of computer music features works from the Winham Laboratory at Princeton University, named in memory of Godfrey Winham, one of the pioneers of computer music in the 1960s. This disc is subtitled "Inner Voices", supposedly because the works presented on it "all help us to make out the inner voices in the sounds of the world around us." Strange, then, that the music on the disc features no real-world sounds whatsoever but uses, rather, either traditional musical instrumentation, or else MIDI or computer synthesised sounds, as its raw material.Generally, in fact, one could say that much of what is presented here is precisely what might be expected from university academics presented with an expensive array of MIDI synthesisers and a computer or two to drive it all: obtuse, impenetrable works with little relevance to the world at large. Certainly many of the items here smack of having been interesting intellectual exercises, which no doubt amused their composers during the compositional process, but which don't really provide much lasting sustenance for listeners thereafter.Paul Lansky's "just_more_idle_chatter" (1987), for instance, is the second of a series of works created from vocal fragments and other similar computer-generated sounds. Stochastically assembled by computer program, it consists of a babble of singing voices, from which a listener constantly tries to deduce meaning but where, in fact, there is simply none to be found. The work's somewhat boppy but, none the less, complex series of rhythms and harmonic shifts, although constantly evolving, ultimately never actually make it anywhere. The piece starts out quite amusing but I fear that by the end of its 9 minutes, most listeners may just be left with the uneasy feeling that they've been subjected to some sort of clever joke that they don't really understand. It wouldn't be too bad if this was the only track like that, but unfortunately, most of the disc leaves me with very much the same feeling. Martin Butler captures the essence of my misgivings in his sleeve note for his work "Night Machines" (1987), a work featuring a rambling collection of musical ideas for a small computer-controlled MIDI ensemble. He writes, "the title is intended to suggest that the machines had as much to do with the music's creation as the composer did." Just so! I feel that exactly the same could be said of most of the other works, as well. Many feel cold, mechanistic and devoid of emotion - just clever academic exercises of little lasting worth. Even their momentary stabs at humour seem oddly detached.When this disc was released, a dozen or so years back, MIDI synthesisers, samplers and computer interfaces to drive them were fairly new and expensive, and weren't yet common additions to most teenagers' bedrooms. Producing works like these was no doubt a fun and exciting thing to do. Probably, at the time, these pieces were felt to have some degree of artistic merit. And while Paul Lansky's "Idle Chatter" pieces may have made it into the electroacoustic canon through their sheer novelty value, I'm not sure that very much can now be said for most of the rest of this disc.Happily, there is one sole and glorious exception to my criticisms and that is "Still Life with Piano" (1989) by Frances White. This is easily the most substantial item on the disc - a comment that is not merely a reference to its 15-minute duration. The depth of emotion - to say nothing of sonorities - explored in this involved work for piano, tape and live electronics is nothing short of extraordinary. The tape part uses piano sounds which have been processed by computer to reveal, through temporal and spectral manipulations, undreamed-of sonorities hidden within them. Indeed, this is the one work that really lives up to the title of the disc, truly exploring its own 'inner voice'. The real piano - played on this recording by Jennifer Tao, and further altered in real-time through live electronic processing equipment operated by the composer herself - quietly re-articulates the material from which the tape was derived. While the manipulated sounds plumb the depths of the sonic spectrum, or else develop into large scale, reverberating explorations of themselves, the live pianist provides a more intimate and immediate perspective, providing a welcome touch of humanity to an otherwise quite cold and sterile release. The disc is worth having for this one track alone and if there were more like this on it, I wouldn't hesitate to give this release the full five stars. Unfortunately..."