REDCAT (Walt Disney Concert Hall)
Los Angeles, California
January 28-30, 2011

Friday, January 28, 2011

Presented by the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, the first night of this three-day festival kicked off in a surprising manner with one of Xenakis’ pioneering and legendary electro-acoustic works, “Diamorphoses” (1957-58), which employed the sounds of jet planes, crashing railroad cars, Earthquake shocks, a tiny Greek bell, etc. to form very dense, dark clouds and giant, downwardly-circling sonic webs. It sounded very impressive in a multi-channel context, although, as I sat front and center, I was puzzled why the music only emanated from the speakers on the right side of the hall. Nevertheless, a wise choice to not include any kind of visuals made it much easier to concentrate on the sound.

I always enjoy listening to music I’ve never heard before–especially live. “Dmaathen” (1976) was the first of three new-to-me pieces on the menu tonight. It combined a raspy, snarling, droning oboe with dry, precise outbursts of percussion, including marimba, xylophone and drums. Another of Xenakis’ early tape works, “Orient Occident” (1960), came next, and sounded much better than “Diamorphoses,” as it poured out of speakers on both sides of the theater and swirled around the audience members’ heads. This piece is considered a classic from the first decade of electronic music. It’s made of such sounds as a cello bow rubbed over a cardboard box, metal rods and gongs, ionosphere signals and a greatly slowed-down excerpt from Xenakis’ instrumental work, “Pithoprakta.”

In “Linaia-Agon” (1972), a trombone battled a horn and a tuba in a series of blats, squawks and drones that sounded like a war between a motorcycle and a pack of elephants. The show was completed with a half-hour slab of Xenakis-inspired turntablism by DJ Sniff. (Don’t worry, you couldn’t dance to it.) As he scratched some vintage Xenakis vinyl, Mr. Sniff fed the resulting sounds into various electronic gadgets, from which he produced layers upon layers of skittering samples that sounded like Xenakis on steroids. Although it was a good performance, it reminded me of how much I love the sublime subtlety of Xenakis’ original electro-acoustic works.

Saturday, January 29, 2010

On night two, no less than three pieces for cello were scattered throughout the program, including “Nomos Alpha” (1965-66) and “Kottos” (1977), which were solo, and “Charisma” (1971) for cello and clarinet. The odd sound realm produced by Xenakis’ s scores included some odd-sounding glissandi up and down the fretless board, low-pitched saw drones, barely-there wind wisps and chattering taps and tussles. Although I enjoyed it, I would have preferred one cello piece and two more of some other instruments for variety.

“Achorripsis” (1956-57) called for a large 21-piece ensemble, who picked (and not exactly grinned), plucked and sawed off a full range of super-quirky stop-and-start avant-garde classical. A slightly smaller 11-piece ensemble realized “Analogique A + B” (1958-1959), which was somewhat similar to Achorripsis, but with added electronic gurgles and blasts of noise. The program closed with the rarely performed “Pour la Paix” (1981) for dancers, singers and electronic sound. Almost all of the piece took place in pitch dark, as the dancers struck poses while their camping headlamps formed pretty patterns on the wall and alternately blinded the audience.

Speaking of the audience, after the first piece, some guy who sat in the seat on my left told me to stop taking photos because he said it was distracting, despite the fact I had already tried to be as considerate and polite as possible by turning off my flash and sound at the very beginning, and I held the camera, which is a tiny point-and-shoot model, literally on my lap the entire time. I never lifted it up once. Unfortunately, the applause died down and everything got quiet before I could debate the issue with him, but at least he moved three seats away before the next piece began.

Then the same thing happened again way later, right before the last piece, when another guy two seats to my right complained about the same thing. I asked him what he does when someone coughs, sneezes or shuffles around in their chair, but of course, he couldn’t come up with a better answer than, “It’s just distracting.” I replied, “That’s ridiculous!” and put my camera away. I can’t believe that people as overly-sensitive as these two would even like Xenakis’ music, much less attend a concert of it. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re music professors.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The third and final night started off with a suite of Xenakis-inspired electro-acoustic music called “Flicker Tone Pulse” (2000-2010) by Curtis Roads. Divided up into seven sections, it unfurled a rushing hailstorm of granular flurries, sour synth stabs and distant echoes that wouldn’t sound out of place on an INA-GRM or empreintes DIGITALes CD. Three or four of the segments were perfectly matched by videos in which rapidly fluctuating abstract lines, shapes and paint splatters were put on prominent display.

The rest of the night featured Xenakis works, starting with “Dikhthas” (1979), which meshed a snarling, raspy violin with some stark, invigorating piano pound ‘n’ tinkle. “Epicycles” (1989) called for a 14-piece ensemble that put their instruments through the paces with all sorts of stop-and-start, lurching, screeching and droning 20th century dissonance and even a homely melody or two thrown in here and there. A slightly smaller 10-piece outfit continued in a similar way with “Akanthos” (1977).

This whole can of worms festival got closed the same way it opened: with another one of Xenakis’ classic electroacoustic works. “Polytope de Cluny” (1972) sent the audience ambling down through an endless array of squeaking doors inside a massive cave full of pinging metal raindrops and deep rumbles that dramatically climaxed with an incredibly loud, screaming cloud of scintillating sound flurries. Again, no visuals accompanied the piece and none were needed. I can’t think of a better ending for this awesome three-day Xenakisfest.

Text and photos ©2011 Arcane Candy

Starting with his breakthrough piece Metastasis (1953), the show visually traced every major period of the man’s career, from his pioneering work on the mathematically surreal Philips Pavillion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, through his polytope / electro-acoustic music / laser light spectacles of the 1960s and ’70s to a couple of late period architectural renderings, including conceptual sketches of massive, five-kilometer tall, curved mega-skyscrapers and a cell-like desert home for fellow composer Roger Reynolds.

There were also a few videos, including a virtual walk-through of the aforementioned Philips Pavillion, interviews with the composer, etc. Much more in-between stuff was included, as well, and the whole quesadilla was detailed on January 27 in a one-hour, cough-punctuated lecture by Xenakis scholar, friend and cold-sufferer, Sharon Kanach. It was wonderful to see so much vintage Xenakis material up close and personal.

Photos enlarge.

Text and photos ©2011 Arcane Candy

Composed in 1977-78 (but not released until 1995) for an architecture, light and sound spectacle to celebrate the opening of The Pompou Center in Paris, the 45-minute La Legende d’Eer (Diatope) is an all-time masterpiece of massive, timeless sound. Starting out with barely audible, incredibly high-pitched tones which gradually increase in volume for six or so minutes, a barren landscape of electricity eventually unfolds as buzzing electronic insects and dust devils crudely unfurl and tear across the stereo field. Eight tracks of this chaos slowly coalesce into an unbelievably dense maelstrom. Giant concrete balls roll around in vast ceramic bowls, immense piles of metal stuff gets raked, oceans of big beverage bottles rattle back and forth, numerous flying saucers ascend loudly over many layers of electronic mayhem. A few more swarms of insects whine back into view as the landscape begins to wind down with some seriously crude low-end crumble. “The close of the work, with its return to the high, whistling invocations of the opening, signifies not so much an apotheosis as the completion of a task, of an ordeal which, if the fates so decree, may be repeated an infinite number of times. But if repeated then once again completed, in all senses this is the music of a survivor.”—Richard Toop

Label: Montaigne Catalog Number: MO 782058 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 1 Total Time: 46:00 Country: France Released: 1995 Related Artists: Francois Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Schaeffer More: Discogs, Electronic Music Foundation, Last FM, MySpace, Official, Wikipedia

A really important and necessary historical reissue, the Electronic Music CD contains all of the material from the old Nonesuch Electro-Acoustic Music LP, which has been out of print since the early 1970s, plus two bonus tracks—all spanning from the mid ’50s up to the early ’90s. Drenched in flowing yet sometimes jarring late-night atmosphere and murky dark-spirit ambience, I would gladly run into a fire to rescue this object. It’s one of my Top 25 desert isle albums, for sure. In “Diamorphoses” (1957) Xenakis used the sounds of jet planes, crashing railroad cars, Earthquake shocks, a tiny Greek bell, etc. to form very dense, dark clouds and giant, downwardly-circling webs of sound. Composed as an prelude to Edgard Varese’s “Poéme Èlectronique” at the Philips Pavillion, “Concret-P.H.” (1958) is comprised exclusively of the highly magnified sound of burning charcoal. The various tracks were heavily spliced and mixed-up to form quite a delicate and strange tapestry of tinkling, crackling sonics.

Halved from its original film soundtrack length of 22 minutes, “Orient-Occident” (1959) is considered a classic from the first decade of electronic music. It’s made of such sounds as a cello bow rubbed over a cardboard box, metal rods and gongs, ionosphere signals and a greatly slowed-down excerpt from Xenakis’ instrumental work, “Pithoprakta.” The immersive sound environment of “Bohor” (1962) is one of the world’s finest examples of pure sound-as-music, and simply makes all other music sound corny. Featuring only a Laotian mouth organ, Oriental bracelets, and other jewelry, this 22-minute epic magically maintains a quite spare yet totally massive, spooky atmosphere. On this remixed(?) CD version, some of the swirling murk of the way slowed-down Laotian mouth organ is subdued, with the emphasis directed more toward the clinking and clanking of the metal objects. Even the sped-up tape whirl at the end, which sounds a lot like having your head shoved inside 10,000 tornadoes, thunderstorms and jet engines that are running at full power, has been mastered more quietly than the old LP. It’s rather disappointing, but still acceptable.

“Hibiki-Hana-Ma” (“Reverberation-Flower-Interval”) (1970) was composed for the World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. Xenakis recorded and reshaped the sounds of an orchestra, snare drum and biwa into another unbelievably gargantuan, ugly, beautiful, pissed array. Huge chunks of abrasive sound reality come flying at your head. On “S.709” (1992): “The GENDYN program completes the project Xenakis began in his instrumental works of the ’50s: How to create a ‘black box’ which could realize an entire musical work on the basis of a few givens. (Of course, the composer is able to intervene and eliminate any chosen sequence.) Generally speaking, the computer generates both the sound synthesis and the composition process itself, without any breach between the two levels. Xenakis here manages to unify micro and macro-composition. The program consists of an algorhythm which explores stochastic timbre more thoroughly than ever before, resulting in a waveform which then evolves constantly through the introduction of ‘polygonal variations’ with the help of probability procedures. This is what Xenakis refers to as ‘the process of dynamic stochastic synthesis.’”—Makis Solomis. Translation: This piece is crammed full with plenty of squeaky, squawky, chattering sound-corrosion.

Label: Electronic Music Foundation Catalog Number: EMF CD 003 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 6 Total Time: 66:49 Country: United States Released: 1997 Related Artists: Francois Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Schaeffer More: Discogs, Electronic Music Foundation, Last FM, MySpace, Official, Wikipedia