Search - Luc Ferrari :: Interruptor / Tautlogos 3

This is the inaugural album of David Grubbs's Blue Chopsticks label and is a reissue of two 1970 performances by the French composer Luc Ferrari (born 1929). Never a stylistic fundamentalist, the erstwhile practitioner of serialism and musique concrète has added ideas, methods, and sounds throughout his career rather than discard them. The cyclical form and the presence of repetitive organ parts in these pieces acknowledges the contemporary work of American minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley, but Ferrari's system is not so closed and repetitive as were theirs. "Tautologos 3," a game piece in which horns, electric guitar, organ, and percussion play looping phrases, foregrounds his additive process. Once set in motion, the phrases recombine into an endlessly shifting musical landscape that skews kinetic perception when the musicians execute passages so rapidly that they seem static. "Interrupteur" is also simultaneously minimal and additive; it's founded on continually evolving layers of long-held organ and brass notes that are repeatedly interrupted by brief, dramatic gestures. --Bill Meyer