Powder (review)

Drew Krause’s recent release on the innova label features just under an hour of his music. Mr. Krause (b. 1960) grew up in Rochester, New York, and studied at Juilliard and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His recent work utilizes computer programs to model mathematical data and musical processes. Three of the compositions on this disc feature solo instrumentalists with electroacoustic accompaniment, and the remaining three are for computer-generated sound. Composed over a period of ten years, the six works exhibit a consistent, unified approach that is anchored in postmodernist irreverence for the modernist accoutrements employed.

Powder (2003), the first piece, begins with an intriguing counterpoint between reverberant clicking sounds reminiscent of matches being struck or sparks from a welding apparatus, and gritty, digitally distorted saw-tooth waves. This texture continues to get louder until reaching a painful level. Combined with the use of raw waveforms the effect is quite poignant. The two contrapuntal lines are locked into a sequenced, quantized groove. This constant stream of evenly spaced pulses is varied through accent placement. Several minutes into the piece one hears a chorused, Karplus-Strong influenced, plucked string sound that articulates the same pulse pattern as before. About halfway through, the piece abruptly stops only to start over again with a different patch. This seems to be an important moment, marking a formal disintegration at the same time the form becomes reified into a kind of theme and variations. The strategy of proceeding chunk by chunk from one timbre to another holds firm through the remainder of the piece. Many of the timbres sound intentionally cliché or artificial, adding a humorous dimension that conjures up sonic images of cartoon music practice. Finally, toward the end of the piece the texture is pared down to a single layer of filtered, pulse-clicks that accelerates until the final moment, as a much slower high-pass filter is simultaneously applied.

The second piece, Tweety (2003), for live flute and computer-generated sound, opens with a short electroacoustic introduction immediately followed by a chaotic, arpeggiated melody in rhythmic unison. Melody, in this piece, proceeds three to seven notes at a time, with the last note in each group receiving an agogic stress. The effect is similar to Franco Donatoni’s Midi for flute, but with an electroacoustic accompaniment featuring amusing quasi-canonic entrances and canned hi-hat, snare, and bass drum sounds that at times are relentless. Like the first piece, the large-scale structure is episodic, but here the emphasis is on a through-composed form paradoxically characterized by local, antecedent-consequent phrases. In addition to the drum machine sounds the electroacoustic part employs a diverse array of referential electronic instruments (e.g., CSound’s Pluck) some sporting exaggerated amounts of chorused detuning. The flautist, Margaret Lancaster, performs admirably, especially as she struggles to perform long stretches of material in single breaths.

Beginning with a percussive explosion, Lounge Hell (2001), for computer-generated sound, is one of the best compositions on this disc. The rhythms are richly diversified and chaotic, often resulting in unpredictable collisions between individual layers of material. These layers are aggressively interrupted by mischievous sonic bursts not unlike those found in the best cartoon music. At various points the material is cycled at ecstatically dizzying rates of speed. About halfway through we hear references to lounge jazz—placid seventh chords and an imitation Hammond B3 patch that rapidly pans from one ear to the other. This piece also offers us a reflective audio environment filled with the detritus of pinball and video game sounds. Mr. Krause has composed a morphology of lounge and video game room sounds that is spectacular.

The fourth piece, Panic (1994), for violin and computer-generated sound, explores a fixed world in which the violin soloist is invariantly accompanied by computer-generated sound. The violin part contains angular, atonal lines that symmetrically rise and fall within a...