Swank (review)

Interface is a duo (Curtis Bahn and Dan Trueman) that started in 1995 at Princeton as an improvisation group playing acoustic violin and bass. In the following years they have integrated successive layers of electronics into their pieces. After some time, the buttons and controls of the electronics became a hindrance, so they set out to search for a more direct way of controlling the synths and the computers.

With Perry Cook, who was teaching Human-Computer Interaction at Princeton, they built a series of new instruments, combining digital generating and processing of sound with direct muscular control: the Sensor Bow, the R-Bow and the Bowed Sensor/Speaker Array. "Combined with the new possibilities of MSP, these gestural interfaces allowed them to make a more direct and immediate musical interaction, uniting improvisation and electronics with the nuance of a small ensemble acoustic music."

So, what you will be hearing when you listen to this CD is basically a pair of 21st-century musicians with instruments that superficially resemble the old violin and bass but whose bowels and bones are used to finely tweak and modify the hoots and cries and squeaks and burps of a set of sophisticated musicmaking computers.

Now, this sounds as though it is intended to ridicule. It is not meant to do so. Not by far. Bahn and Trueman prove that they are undoubtedly skilled and sensitive musicians who want to explore new sounds as well as build up a rich and surprising listening experience. (I assume they enjoy playing as much as experimenting.)

The record has eight tracks, called "sphism," "spogo," "scrb," "sedan," "sdoo," "sdrone," "swank" and "sdude." Most of the time, one doesn't recognize the source of the sound, except in "sdoo," where Perry Cook himself joined them on DigitalDoo, which is a didgeridoo with sensor/speaker interface, but that is not important. The music is mysterious, surprising, funny, delightful, subtle and sometimes resolutely irritating, which is nice.