Chas Smith Descent Smith - Cb0023 - Contemporary - by Cold Blue

Smith has created his own musical world—complete with its own instruments and “language.” It is a world of expansive musical tapestries and carefully sculpted textures that never sit absolutely still, but evolve via a slow, constant change of aural perspective. Smith’s soundworld, however, it is not an altogether alien one, and critics, in their praise of Smith’s work, have repeatedly compared his compositions—some resonantly beautiful, some darkly brooding, some sonically overpowering—to those of Ligeti. With Descent, Smith continues to create the great, sometimes clangorous soundscapes. The central pitch and structural ideas for the three pieces that comprise this CD were originally conceived for an evening of music that Smith presented at Los Angeles’s historic Schindler House. Here, those initial ideas are expanded and developed. On this recording, Smith utilizes his large sculptural instruments, which are all made of various metals (and go by such unusual names as Copper Box, Que Lastas, Pez Eater and Jr. Blue), steel guitar, the recorded sounds of jet engines, and Smith’s self-designed-and-built three-neck steel guitar, “guitarzilla,” which he prepares (a la John Cage’s prepared piano) with metal rods and plays with hammered dulcimer hammers. [CD and folder in jewel case]