#olewnick

Friday, October 07, 2011

Lee Noyes/Phil Brownlee/Jerome Poirier - White & Red/Lux (idealstate) Two works, the first, "White & Red" with Noyes on sampler and electronics, Brownlee on violin. The violin is spare and scratchy, Noyes' contributions fairly minimal. It's the kind of music that can easy succumb to aridity combined with a sense of meandering and that's almost the case here for the first several minutes. But gradually, a sort of tentative fluidity asserts itself, the col legno's take on a settled aspect and the electronics finds an interesting steady tone, an odd, rounded sound that somehow works quite well with the still dry strings. Things grow suitably chaotic toward the end, making the trip fairly satisfying overall. "Lux" is a substantially different creature with Noyes deploying a "laptop-processed 19tet inside piano" and Poirier on electric cello. While the sounds themselves are rather smoother than the preceding piece, the structure is fragmented into blocks, the arco cello, generally rich in tone, offset against a variety of electronic attacks that, true to their source (or one of their sources, at least) tend to have something of a piano resonance to them. There's a very odd and intriguing section with the inside piano generating a periodic, harsh alarm-bell sound while the cello is searching the nether regions beneath; very unsettling. It eventually slows down drastically, evolving into a series of blurts, burps and scrapes, yet retaining, somehow, a forward flow. Fascinating piece, I enjoyed it very much.