Michael Byron Fabric for String Noise String Noise Bergman - CB0054 - Contemporain

Fabric for String Noise is wildly virtuosic music for two violins. Unlike pretty much anything else written for violins, this new two-movement piece may be said to resemble some sort of universal folk music of madly driven ecstasy, a sonic canvas wherein intense hyperactivity shares space with an overarching sense of motionlessness. The composer characterizes Fabric for String Noise as a “sound object” that is “tangible, compact, and marked by extreme polyrhythmic complexity and intricate contrapuntal textures,” noting that it utilizes “only the higher registers of the violin, sharpening the music’s edge and crystalizing the perceptual object.” Also on the CD is the first recording of an earlier Byron work, Dragon Rite—a slow, beautifully rumbling work for four double basses, occasionally employing quarter-tones. Dedicated to poet Philip Lamantia, Dragon Rite seems to continuously change the listener’s perspective while at the same time remaining unchanged. This album offers an interesting overview of a 45-year span of Byron’s work. Throughout that time, he has shown a fascination with drawing together and/or placing side by side seemingly at-odds minimalist and maximalist techniques, as well as sound worlds of immersive beauty and wild virtuosic abandon. [CD in 6-panel wallet]