#red (db)

Red is an idea that can be conveyed as an installation, a solo performance, or a piece played by several musicians. All versions share certain essential ingredients. You need a room with a reasonably high ceiling and a means to suspend one or more nets, which are woven from speaker wire. Inside the nets are resonant acoustic instruments; this recording features two, one full of double basses and another full of drums. The microphones inside one net pick up the sounds of the enclosed instruments and generate feedback, and, since basses and drums can double as speakers, those sounds can be fed into the instruments in the other net. Each net is capable of making sound on its own and its vibrations can induce changes in that sound, but, for good measure, a person can also swing the net to induce more changes.

Red (DB) documents a version with musicians. The composer plays synthesizer, Brandon Lopez (no relation) plays bass and Gerald Cleaver plays drums. You can watch them performing the piece on YouTube and Lopez’ website, and it’s edifying to watch how it’s done. The drummer and bassist keep their eyes on the score, playing with a restraint quite unlike the bruising free jazz that they play in the Brandon Lopez Trio. A movement artist and the composer give the nets a nudge every now and then, and the latter also tends to her synthesizer, shaping a steady, machine-like grind. Observation makes clear how each action, whether guided or spontaneous, influences the evolving sound field.

But the item under consideration here is the recording. Without visual cues, it’s hard to say what comes from the nets and what’s coming out of the synthesizer. The bass, played with abrupt drags of the bow, groans and distorts, while Cleaver favors friction and unaccented beats. Listeners who dig coarse texture will luxuriate, but if you dig tunes, you may well get lost. Shudder presses against rumble, while hums undulate within. It all feels like even more of an abstraction than your average CD of improvised music, but that’s an observation, not a criticism. As the piece progresses, it’s easy to forget that people and instruments are involved, and to feel like you’re hearing some sped-up broadcast of the earth’s plates grinding against each other. Which goes to show that even when your experience of Red lacks the opportunity to witness how it’s done, its systemic essence is undeniable. No island, after all, is separate from the world.