![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sen_no_ongakuBe warned; this may have no meaning to you at all.
Keith Fullerton Whitman's piece opened with electronic percussion -- think the beeps and boops in Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator, or the computer solo in Four Tet's As Serious as Your Life. Underneath, a low drone started to build, the room's ambient noise amplified and looped back on itself. The percussion and drone were slowly replaced by high, clear, shimmering tones, loosely modal. Listening to them was like being made of water that was suddenly ripped through with electrified noise, or maybe like giant pillars of fire rising out of the sea. The electric noises eventually coalesced into a field of pitch that felt like a lazy, hot summer day, complete with insectile sounds, some of which crystallized into notes. The heat began to grow more oppressive, the insects more aggressive, and what sounded like...audible holes...began to take over, eventually fragmenting into quantum foam, which became more and more chaotic until I felt very small indeed. The foam receded suddenly (perhaps the most striking moment), and was gradually overtaken by white noise, growing and growing until it cut off, ending the piece.
I was sad when it went away.
Unfortunately, Oren Ambarchi's piece was less good. First I was bored by guitar drones, then trapped inside a dentist's drill, then a jackhammer. It was ugly as hell, and painful to boot. The only interesting part was the end, as he started turning off his equipment, and the pops and clicks it was producing were picked up by his boxes and mixers and processed back out through the speakers.
I guess one out of two ain't bad when you attend a concert with no idea of what to expect.
Keith Fullerton Whitman's piece opened with electronic percussion -- think the beeps and boops in Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator, or the computer solo in Four Tet's As Serious as Your Life. Underneath, a low drone started to build, the room's ambient noise amplified and looped back on itself. The percussion and drone were slowly replaced by high, clear, shimmering tones, loosely modal. Listening to them was like being made of water that was suddenly ripped through with electrified noise, or maybe like giant pillars of fire rising out of the sea. The electric noises eventually coalesced into a field of pitch that felt like a lazy, hot summer day, complete with insectile sounds, some of which crystallized into notes. The heat began to grow more oppressive, the insects more aggressive, and what sounded like...audible holes...began to take over, eventually fragmenting into quantum foam, which became more and more chaotic until I felt very small indeed. The foam receded suddenly (perhaps the most striking moment), and was gradually overtaken by white noise, growing and growing until it cut off, ending the piece.
I was sad when it went away.
Unfortunately, Oren Ambarchi's piece was less good. First I was bored by guitar drones, then trapped inside a dentist's drill, then a jackhammer. It was ugly as hell, and painful to boot. The only interesting part was the end, as he started turning off his equipment, and the pops and clicks it was producing were picked up by his boxes and mixers and processed back out through the speakers.
I guess one out of two ain't bad when you attend a concert with no idea of what to expect.
