Space Sound – Multichannel Electroacoustic Music by six composers: Thomas DeLio, Thomas Licata, Agostino Di Scipio, Kristian Twombly, Kees Tazelaar, Linda Dusman – Capstone Records CPS-8811 DVD, DD 5.1 surround or 2.0 stereo (1 sel. has 16:9 color video animation, the rest are audio only) **:
I should confess first off to not being a special fan of electroacoustic music. I was once a great fan of musique concrete but have found that most electronic music today lacks emotional communication. This very unusual DVD is a co-production between the Music Center of the Netherlands and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The first six selections are audio only and their default setting is Dolby 5.1 surround, but using the menu one can select stereo if you wish. (There is no credit anywhere for Dolby, but Dolby Digital is displayed on my preamp display during playback. I’m placing this review in the DVD Video section because it’s not hi-res audio, though only the final track involves video.)
The first two selections are by the same composer, which explains the six composers/seven tracks. They and the third composition are electroacoustic realizations of three different short poems. The composers explain in the notes that there was no effort to have all the words of the poems intelligible; in fact much of the three pieces consists of various squawks and electronic sounds coming out of long silences with very few words to be heard. I feel that Capstone would have a better chance of this collection reaching a wider audience if it had included a few more approachable works plus an introduction of some sort to electroacoustic music in the note booklet. The works certainly do make use of the surround medium, but there is little that would appeal to the average music lover.
The one exception is the final work: Magnificat 3: Lament, by Linda Dusman. The work is performed by solo violinist Airi Yoshioka, with computer animation by Alan Price and it runs about 12 minutes. It is a lament for 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The composer was thinking of all the children around the world who are victims of violence. Price’s real time animation is similar to that in the animated music DVDs, Animusic I & Animusic II, which we have reviewed, except of a more experimental nature. The animation responds to the dynamics and pitch of the violin; one feels strongly the interface between the violinist’s bow and the strings of the instrument. The opening images could be seen as being in the nature area, of a sort of threatening vine that unfolds in sync with the violin music. Then the images morph into more architectural forms which again respond closely to the audio. There is a contrast of order and disorder, of dissonance and consonance in both the images and music. Toward the conclusion, the two elements become unified. This is a fascinating music and animation effort, and I will be retaining the DVD because of this selection.
– John Sunier
