Single minded and presented at its own pace, this is the music of tuning forks. Yes, those little U-shaped forks that come in varying sizes, usually tuned to one of the notes in an octave. In this case, each octave has been expanded to between 19 and 53 micro-tonal pitches, making a unique harmonic palette. It's the interaction of these pitches that defines Warren Burt's music, tonal environments of consonance and dissonance, mostly slow cycling to the benefit of the long decay of each fork's being struck, with occasional moments of slippery activity. Each piece was recorded in three passes for reasons of mulitracking. The two CDs are each the presentation of two larger works, "The Animation of Lists" and "And the Archytan Transpositions," each based upon the other. They were originally requested in 2002 by Phill Niblock who wanted a non-electronic tonal work.
Burt, who created the custom set of aluminum tuning forks used on these recordings, cites his goals in these compositions as an explanation of complex just intonations, long scale permutational structures, and a piece which can exist in multiple versions varying on pitch and rhythm transpositions. The choices of pitches were determined by process, an elaborate algorithm to produce a slowly changing series of randomly combining harmonic worlds. The results are clearly in the minimal school. The environments are full, lush in their own way, but also static and on reflection feel like programmed music. There is a sameness to the results, which fits the intent of the composer, but that makes the two CDs seemingly interchangeable. That's not a criticism, because this music is all about aural environment, and at that it's extremely functional and remarkably gentle in both consonant and dissonant progressions. There is a hint of the "new age" to this release, but the environments are absorbing without being intrusive, a good auditory accomplishment.
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Phil Zampino 2006-05-23
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