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Horizontal Mover (Homage to Alvin Lucier) - Claudio Parodi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Alvin Lucier 1931- is a composer and sound artist who's life time work straddles some of the furthest reaches of experimental and conceptual music and sound. He has pioneered many area's of composition and performance and is best known for his work with the use of brain waves and the notation of performers physical gestures in live performances. He has also explored the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media and the manipulation of acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space. Alvin Lucier continues to record, perform, lecture and exhibit sound installations in the US, Europe and Asia. Taking inspiration from Luciers 1970 work I am sitting in a room, Horizontal Mover is the first of 7 ongoing works by Claudio Parodi utilizing the audio from the album 'Suoni 2005' by Tiziano Milani. In a similar process to Lucier's work, he diffuses and re-records the source track until it completely dissipates until you are just left with just acoustic ambiance. The only reference point I could find to why he would use Tiziano Milani's work as source audio for a homage to Alvin Lucier is that he appears to be a friend & colleague of Claudio's and encourages the manipulation of his work. Finding all this somewhat of a distraction I was content to leave it at that as the end result and process in which Claudio arrived at the composition seemed more relevant than the source material used to create it. Lucier's work I am sitting in a room is based on the diffusion of recorded spoken word phrases, each recording emphasizing the natural resonance of the room until the voice completely disappears. Claudio Parodi uses a similar technique of recording the diffusion of an original track, omitting it and diffusing each subsequent recording of which there were to be 12. Humming amps and resonating drums & symbols from each track were also recorded and layered into the mix with slight variations in their position on each recording. After each of these recorded diffusions, determined parts were then edited and duplicated on the left & right channels. Before each new recording the material was then time stretched, which at track 7 not surprisingly led to the collapse of the disc drive. The rest you could say is history but involved 5 further recorded diffusions that were then cross faded to create a composition where only the natural reverberation of the room is left. As an entire work the 58' 31 composition moves through elongated collages of sound, developing as a single time based piece. Long stretched tones are interspersed with melodic fragments, percussive clicks & rattles underpinned by a close reverb, which I'm guessing is the timbre of the room. At about 40 minutes the various layers drop to a single high frequency signal that unsettles a now slightly soporific state. Reminiscent of an electricity sub station this signal continues to grow in velocity and bandwidth before coming to a sudden stop ushering in a palpable relief to the senses. As with all continuous works Horizontal Mover is not easy to dip into and requires dedicated listening. For the most part I found it an unobtrusive even relaxing listen although I felt there was a certain Cagien element of process versus result. It should certainly be a favorite for all connoisseurs of drone ambient and time based music. Review by
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