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Talking
Drum CD, P21034-2, $14.00 Distributors
website: http://www.pogus.com/. Distributors
website: http://www.tzadik.com/ The four recent and
two older pieces on Rogue Wave
show that characteristics apparent in
Talking Drum are interests Brown
has pursued throughout the years - the
interaction between electronic systems
and live musicians, the distribution of
sounds around a space as part of his compositions
and recordings, and his predilection for
rhythm as a major driving force for his
music. Rogue Wave does, however,
present a far broader sampling of Chris
Brown's multifaceted work. It includes
computer network music, which he pioneered
with his colleagues of The Hub; his piano
playing; his work with self-built and
adapted instruments; collaborations with
other musicians and composers, such as
the virtuoso percussionist William Winant
who is featured on three of the tracks;
and even a piece of symphonic instrumentation,
scaled down by necessity, but impressive
nonetheless. Called Alternating Currents,
it was commissioned by Kent Nagano for
the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in 1983.
This piece seems to foreshadow Lava
being likewise scored for percussion,
brass and live electronics. Written over
twenty years ago it already shows Brown's
use of complex and irregular rhythms (which
may expand and contract) as central to
his compositional work. Brown himself performs
in all the pieces on the Rogue Wave
album, mostly doing live electronics.
Apart from the Rogue Wave piece
he is most perceptibly present in Transmission
Tenderloin and Retroscan. The
former was taken from a live broadcast,
which is part of an ongoing series of
collaborations between Brown and Guillermo
Galindo, in which their electronic music
improvisations are broadcast over different
frequencies, to be picked up by people
in an outdoor audience on receivers they
bring with them. This turns the environment
into one large performance space full
of moving sound. .
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