CD-Audio/DVD-Video, 2004, Asphodel ASP3000; available from Asphodel, Ltd., 763 Brannan Street, San Francisco, California 94103, USA; telephone (+1) 415-863-3068; fax (+1) 415-863-4973; electronic mail info@asphodel.com; Web www.asphodel.com/cat/asp_3000.html.

Reviewed by Brigitte Robindoré
Santa Monica, California, USA

In the 5th century, B.C., a group of Greek philosophers called the Atomists put forward the proposition that all things are composed of tiny indivisible particles. It was posited that these innumerable primary bodies stream eternally through the infinite void, only to whirl together, collide, and unite, in order to generate objects in the complex world. The scientific realm imagined by these Greek prophets meets today’s philosophical realm attained by quantum physics on a plane of deep mystery. Though a few musical visionaries such as Iannis Xenakis have theorized on this plane from afar, only one explorer has trekked through it in a 31-year relentless pursuit of discovery. That man is Curtis Roads. With this new collection of microsonic compositions, he has placed his pioneer’s flag squarely into the infinite dunes of sonic particles.
The title of this release, Point Line Cloud, speaks to the multiple time scales of music that preoccupy the composer—the micro (individual points or sound particles extending to the threshold of auditory perception), the sound object (lines or tones, morphological events), and the meso (sound object groupings, phrase structures, clouds). The macro (how points, lines, and clouds are structured into compositional form) seems of more subdued importance to this collection of works, though it clearly has its place.

The microsonic level, unknown to note-based musical traditions, introduces immense complexity and even new paradigms into the already vast world of musical organization. But it is clearly the level that Mr. Roads most relishes. He passes handfuls of sonic particles through his fingers much the way a child plays at the beach, in wonderment over the falling grains of an overflowing bucket of sand. Mr. Roads literally inhabits the micro time scale, editing particle by particle, caring for the acoustic space each will inhabit, its amplitude, its frequential components — selecting each grain as it may contribute to a mass, to a spiral, a burst, an upheaval, a wisp, a breath. Operating at this level, it is no surprise that, of the 13 pieces presented here, the average duration is around three minutes—a succinct unit of expression, which, according to the composer, is one of the most important form durations related to the human time scale, as evidenced by its prevalence in popular music. But, unlike the pop song, these are intricate, dense miniatures, so chiseled that one could easily echo Arnold Schoenberg’s observation on the brevity of Anton Webern’s works as reducing “a novel to a sigh.” 

And sigh Mr. Roads does.  These works have a overall dusty palette, infused with noises of a white, grey, and sandy persuasion. There is almost the feeling of watching grainy (no pun intended) black and white footage of a previously uncharted universe. And in this sphere of quantum sonics, rolling marbles and beads of sound operate according to an inner logic seemingly dictated by the very medium of particles, added to sheer invention.

One structuring element explored by Mr. Roads is a timbral continuum between dry/metallic and wet/submerged soundscapes. The nigh obsolete organizing principles of pitch and meter appear only as secondary phenomena, produced by particle replication. As such, when they do appear they are absolutely stunning events, made all the more beautiful by their ephemeral apparition. And here the old phrase really applies: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone [!]”

In Eleventh Vortex (2001), pitch zones appear on the horizon much as a colorful school of fish passes by an underwater film camera – a glorious moment that may never come your way again.  Perhaps more than any other works, Tenth Vortex (2000)and Eleventh Vortex sound like musical necessities, far transcending the sum of their parts. In Nanomorphosis (2003), the composer is concerned in part with water-like properties of sonic particles, some of which attain almost a dripping liquid state, enhanced by reverberation. As Mr. Roads states, “the particles sound at times like a scattering of hard pellets, a flowing or bubbling liquid, or an evaporating cloud of steam.” Fluxon (2003) evokes an atmosphere offeathered masses in flight.

In Sculptor (2001), the composer’s source material was a monaural percussion track sent to him by John McEntire of the band Tortoise. Although the “beating drums [are] … disintegrated … into a torrent of sound particles,” the listener can still bathe in a sound mass repetition similar to the crashing of waves, only to have it then disappear on the shore of time. Indeed, if one were to perceive any overarching ethos in this collection, it might be summed up in these words: “Catch me if you can!” Fleeting moments of thought invite contemplation, but dissipate before you can quite grasp their hidden meaning. One wonders, though, whether this inscrutable nature is endemic to microsonic composition per se or to the composer’s own musical identity.  Perhaps it is both.     

Of note on the CD portion of this set are a number of written texts, including two articles by Mr. Roads (“Origins of granular synthesis: the Prototype study” and “The path to Half-life”), an article on the visualization of Pictor Alpha by Gary Kling (the visualization itself is on the accompanying DVD), a score generated for Half-life, part I: Sonal atoms by James  Ingram, and an interview with Mr. Roads that I conducted in 2003. Point Line Cloud was honored with the Award of Distinction at the Ars Electronica Festival in 2002.
The listener of this music will be ushered into far-away worlds where the weighty matters of day-to-day Newtonian life may be laid aside in order to receive a gift of primary bodies, whirled into musical being by this master of quantum sonics.

DVD reviewed by James Harley
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
                               
The DVD component of Curtis Roads’ Point Line Cloud release includes a second presentation of 10 of the 13 tracks included on the CD. These 10 pieces are here presented with video elements created by Brian O’Reilly. The video was in all cases produced after the music was completed, although, according to the artist, it was created with a great deal of input from, and discussion with, the composer. In addition to these works, the DVD includes a couple of other “visualizations” of selected pieces by students of the Media Arts and Technology (MAT) program at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where Mr. Roads teaches. The disc also contains an audio recording of a lecture on microsound and granular synthesis given by Mr. Roads at Stanford University in 2004, and a sonic study in granular synthesis produced by Mr. Roads in 1975. A paper discussing this early work is included in the enhanced portion of the CD.
Mr. O’Reilly has a background in visual media and in music. According to the liner notes, the development of graphic material to go along with the computer music produced by Mr. Roads arose out of a research project at UCSB. The aim was to explore “advanced representations and notations for music and visualization for electronic music.” Mr. O’Reilly, a student at UCSB at that time, was one of the people involved in this project, and an artistic collaboration followed on from there. Presently, Mr. O’Reilly is Operations Manager for Recombinant Media Labs (closely associated with Asphodel Records, the company issuing this release) in San Francisco. His interest in the “micro” realm takes inspiration from Paul Klee. According to his Artist Statement, “from a study of minutiae and its interrelationships, one can deduce the unseen outlines of complex forms. One of the ways in which I focus on this is to use a miniscule amount of material… I take these slight bits of digital detritus and combine and recombine them to create an arborescent collection of relations tracing outward from the original source, creating a database of materials, from which the final structure is then created.” More information on Mr. O’Reilly’s work can be found on his Web site.

The order of presentation of the works on the DVD differs slightly from that of the CD. Tenth Vortex (2000), Eleventh Vortex (2001), and Now (2003) are not included, and Sculptor (2001), the piece Mr. O’Reilly created first, is moved up to be the opening track (as opposed to the fifth track on the CD). Aside from combining the two Half-life tracks into one (Sonal atoms, and Granules), the order is otherwise the same as on the CD. Given the short durations of each of the pieces, the ordering is significant, given that one flows relatively quickly from one to the next when viewing/listening. In both cases, the CD and the DVD, the succession works fine. On the DVD, the disproportionate length of the Half-life track is mitigated by its clear division into two parts.

Due to space constraints, I will offer only some general observations on the video elements of Point Line Cloud rather than discuss each track in detail. Mr. O’Reilly’s video work here is artistically assured and extremely proficient, technically. His approach is relatively consistent throughout: the succession of images is presented at a rapid pace, reflecting, in a sense, the granular nature of the sounds. The visual materials appear to have been mostly derived from “concrete” images rather than computer-generated elements. But, the editing and pace of succession often renders the sources of the images unrecognizable. I responded well to the ambiguity the video produced, exploring as it does the zones between the familiar and the abstract. The sounds, of course, do the same.

Mr. O’Reilly has chosen to edit the video in tight synchronization to the music. When there are perceivable articulation points in the music—accents, pauses, etc.—the video marks these moments in a similar way, with pauses, significant shifting of image content, etc. In addition, while there is some sharing of source material across pieces, particularly amongst related ones (the two parts of Half-life, for example, or the four Volt Air pieces), each track manifests a unique color set, a tendency toward yellows and reds, for example (Sculptor), or greens and browns (Half-life, part I). All of the pieces, though, proceed by means of very rapid intercutting of images. The pace varies, thankfully, but moments of visual repose are rare and brief. The range of the variation of pace is nonetheless fairly restricted, and I found this visual rhythm a bit relentless over the whole set, which lasts over half an hour. Editing at a faster rate might have taken the visual elements into the realm of “synthesis,” where the succession of images would flow smoothly because the eye no longer senses the presence of each new frame. Similarly, frozen images, or tracking shots, would provide some reprieve. To my eye, Volt air, part III (2003) was one of the more successful, in that the images flowed more organically at times. I found this a welcome relief.

I mention this because the music is extremely detailed and, on the micro level, fast-paced. Mr. Roads has created sounds whose granular qualities and changes can often be perceived as they are presented. There are other levels of formal organization, as there are in the video elements, but it is more difficult, at least for my eyes, to shift from rapid intercutting to global successions in the visual realm than the aural. Putting this intricate, “atomic” music together with intricate, fast-paced video produces a sensory experience that can become tiring. I admit, however, that others more accustomed to the rapid-fire editing techniques of commercial music videos and so forth may not take as much issue with this element. Nonetheless, visual stimuli naturally take attention away from aural stimuli if they are highly engaging, as these are, and multimedia producers need to keep this in mind.

These works have been presented in club and festival contexts where concentrated listening would not have been the primary focus. In such venues, I am sure that Mr. O’Reilly’s videos would enhance the presentation of this rich albeit decidedly non-commercial music to audiences who may be unfamiliar with its technical and aesthetic sources and aims.

The music and the visual elements were conceived separately. It would be interesting to see/hear a true collaboration by these distinguished artists. In any case, this is an important release that should be on everyone’s list to check out.