In an unintentionally humorous 2007 interview, an annoyed and/or hurried Morton Subotnick answers the journalist's, "Harmony? Dissonance? The freedom to choose both, none or just one?" with, "Not a very interesting subject to me". Flippant, but a common response from electroacoustic composers/improvisers when asked about their work; these people belong to a special sect that wears the hat of inventor as often as musician, adorning their new-born galaxies with freshly forged sounds. It's like asking Rothko "hey, could you sketch a caricature of my kid?" after looking at his Untitled (No. 4).
At a glance, the first works of Sense (the twelve-part semi-composed "Limen", defined as "a threshold of physiological or psychological response") exude an air of ignorance towards the basic elements of music — but that subject isn't very interesting when you've got hard drives to purge. Valuing dexterity and amazement over pitch and harmony, electronics pioneers Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer sprint through a cache of blips, mangled voices, imploded acoustics and sampled/re-sampled anomalies with immortal speed, barely developing any of their puree in favor of page-flipping aural disorientation. Here lies their genius — and key signatures be damned! These virtuosic mages are unparalleled in their collective ability to stitch, tear down, rip, defragment, poke and circumvent your expectations; and when they do linger on a single note — such as a left-right-panning ghost of Satchmo ("IV"), a dizzying moon-landing drone ("V"), an off-putting alien infant ("VI"), or a head-scratching offspring of shredding Metal and flabby trombone ("XII") — they do so at the point just before your interest in this merry-go-round wanes, reeling you up to the edge before, once again, hurling you off the cliff and into the waves.
The second piece is an improvised, 26-minute homage to Stockhausen, a fitting gig for these two potential successors to his genre. Immediately, the duo amasses momentum with nostalgic bleeps, squeaks, Serialistic piano bursts and wobbling sine tones, building until a crash and a jarring tape splice/edit. Steeped in the history of Elektronische Musik 1952-1960 (and Earle Brown's Octet I), the work continues as an eerie almost-reworking of Kontakt interspersed with other quotations (i.e. wispy trickles of Gesang der Junglinge). Barrett and Obermayer manage Stockhausen's methodology and sonic aesthetic, and exact it with the hyperactive flair of live digital instruments with bottomless opportunities.
In the aforementioned Q&A, Subotnick gives an unelaborated "no" to the query, "Many artists dream of a 'magnum opus'. Do you have a vision of what yours would sound like?" A complicated mix of fascination, cleverness, humor, a seamless personality, a deft juggling act (one critic called the duo "Million-Headed Monster"), forward-thinking while respectful of its elders, Sense reaches a peak... Well, Barrett and Obermayer better get started on their acceptance speech.
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