Imploding Stars
is a journey into space, a weather check on the nature of constellations, planets and stars, or is it atoms and particles? Same difference. With titles like ‘waiting for space to expand’ and its mirror image ‘waiting for space to contract’, it becomes obvious that we are considering timelines so large that they are difficult to comprehend. And so it is with the size of those compounded-constellations of sounds, it is difficult to tell what we are looking at (or hearing). It feels a bit like the type of abstract art photography that blurs perspective and one wonders if they are looking are a macro landscape or the micro world.
This music is like fractals.
In Buddhist teachings you can find comments on notions of endless time or space. This culture worked with a sense of time, periods like kalpas, that are hard to even grasp (time stretches that cover appearance and disappearance of entire universes). Similarly with scale, there is this understanding that everything is empty of inherent existence and you can analyse any ‘thing’ that comes into existence down to its basic components and the conditions by which it came into being – there is no such a thing as a permanent, unchanging entity.
But it does not stop here. Even atoms and particles are compounds and one could, given the ability to perceive such things, keep going smaller still into other realms of existence, into a universe of vibrations so ‘small’ that no one can actually even consider, let alone measure. In line with buddhist teachings that are 2500 years old, quantum science is now considering fields that act as a matrix for the arising of material forms, and inform the nature of compounded vibrations. All is energy.
The music here gives the impression that we are taken on a journey into the micro realm, with sound processing like granulation taking the ear into increasing smaller fragments until the point of origin, the first sound that is the breath, has been completely deconstructed and nothing remains but the ghost of a sound, to the point of near silence.
Or is it? Are there other realms to explore further? Even points of silence retain a certain tension, or expectation, as if one is suspended in space.
This is a concept album with a coherence of sound and approach, and if you willingly engage with the work and let yourself be drawn into its universe, the bulk of its 78 minutes may appear just like the blink of an eye. But reflecting on buddhist practice, you have to let go of the self and dive in. Let the change happen, and with such a journey into the very matter, the nature of things, one cannot remain unchanged.
If this were a collaboration between a saxophonist and a digital artist doing various manipulations, this work would be easier to understand, but it would not be the same of course. Here though, the same artist does both, live in the studio, in real time, compromising the instrument and extended techniques (and all the research into the instrument, control and hours of work that this implies) and surrenders to the sound of strings of plug-ins (yes, the scientific metaphor can run all the way… fractals, remember?). Rather than having a saxophonist and electronic artist performing their best licks, what you have is an instrumentation that becomes transparent and lets the concept, the singular sonic identity of the work come to the fore.
Entire musical world-systems collide, improv jazz, electroacoustic and experimental electronics, new music, contemporary and its minimal spectral approaches and so on. If this work was placed in a different context, with an accompanying band, the correlation to modern jazz such as the Norwegian cool, with added electronics to stripped down harmonic contents and fragile melody, would be clearer. But in this case, the work is very hard to classify. Perhaps it is the whole point to not reduce this entire scientific enquiry to a musical style. Because you know that this came out of the mind of one person, you can relate with its uniqueness as a deliberate positioning. There is a sense of an intention to make this a listening experience and not another ‘improv’ ‘jazz’ or ‘electronic’ album.
The work on the saxophone is mostly extended techniques, sounds peripheral to the instrument; and although some notes can be heard at times, most of the sounds you’ll hear from the saxophone are stripped down to the basis of breath and overtones that derive from its flow.
This essential material of breath becomes metaphorical for the most essential material that exists; it is like prana or qi that infuses life into the all. And ensues a series of pieces with a common theme around space, the universe.
Out of emptiness, vibrations. Then particles of sounds are created. The album takes you through world systems and different universes, some more or less populated and dense, some very minimal where everything is fragile and impermanent.
The processing is multi-layered: computer-based manipulations such as granulation, spectral processing and synthesis retain essential aspects of the original sound, but also multiply, sculpt and transform the results in unexpected ways. And because a number of tools are at work at all times, it is hard to tell exactly what is the result of what effect – reality is never all that it seems. The processing itself is also compounded – a construct with ever changing combinations that give the character to its own sonic architecture. And the origin, the conditions by which what we hear arises is very hard to perceive. We just have to go with what is and enter its realm in order to feel the very nature of things.
This is a very unique listening experience and the use of headphones is highly recommended as one enters into this ‘other’ sonic reality. For sure, this is not background entertainment, and it will take some commitment or listening attention. Just like the cinema is designed to remove people from mundane reality and place them into a controlled environment for optimum experience, suspend disbelief and become wrapped into a story, here too, if one enters this sound world and let go, follow the journey that is presented, with open mind, the rewards will be great.
nexttime studio 