Criss Cross/Hanover

2023 REPRESS...The premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. A friend and contemporary of pioneers like Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, and Christian Wolff, Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s. Demonstrating the restless creative drive of an artist now in his 80s, the two recent works presented here both feature the electric guitar, an instrument Lucier has just recently begun to explore. In Criss-Cross, Luciers first composition for electric guitars, two guitarists using e-bows sweep slowly up and down a single semitone, beginning at opposite ends of the pitch range. The piece is a model of simplicity, exemplifying Luciers desire not to compose in the conventional sense, but rather to eliminate everything that distracts from the acoustical unfolding of the idea. In this immaculately controlled performance of Criss-Cross by Oren Ambarchi and Stephen OMalley, (for whom the piece was written in 2013), a seemingly simple idea creates a rich array of sonic effects not simply beating patterns, which gradually slow down as the two tones reach unison and accelerate as they move further apart, but also the remarkable phenomenon of sound waves spinning in elliptical patterns through space between the two guitar amps.

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Details

Format: Vinyl LP
Artist: Alvin Lucier
Release Date: 05 May 2023
Genre: Special Interest / Miscellaneous
Label: Black Truffle
Distributor: MGM Music