DANIEL WARNER
A set of elongated haiku, From the Parenthesis of a Step features unembellished
sound-events that emerge from, and then retreat back into the surrounding
silence, occasionally overlapping or forming sudden pileups. Indebted to the
music of Morton Feldman, Brian Eno, and Tangerine Dream, this set of pieces is
the point of departure for Warner's recent work.
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From the Parenthesis of a Step: Track 3 (MP3 file)
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Sound samples course through digital circuitry, routed,
deflected, and compressed by shifting parameters. Hands on the tracking ball,
Warner transforms his Powerbook into the Inharmonium. Firing up the
unwieldy mechanism, he orchestrates a voluptuous and unruly ensemble of
distorted guitars, bells, woodblocks, and bass drums. Tones scatter and
collide, slowly decaying in unexpected combinations. Unfolding slowly and
without determinate direction, these eight untitled tracks are nonetheless
permeated with the tension of improvisation, each movement erupting newly and
unpredictably from the last.
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Inharmonium: Track 3 (MP3 file)
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What is the life of a sound? At the point where Karlheinz
Stockhausen's Mikrophonie meets Jimi Hendrix' "Star Spangled Banner," Eight
Years of Swimming Lessons lets sounds loose and delights in their electronic
transformation. Shot into the Powerbook, guitar drones and bell tones cycle and
swirl, altered, tripped up, and deflected by gates and filters. The result is
an ever-changing ambient environment at once aquatic and galactic where sweeps
and fragments of tones and drones live and die.
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Eight Years of Swimming Lessons: Track 1 (MP3 file)
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Like a gamelan in slow motion or a set of oddly tuned mechanical
wind chimes, Mechanisms of Musical Meaning features a haunting,
clanging, orchestra of bells and plucked strings. Conceptually, the piece is
inspired by the unlikeliest combination of sources: computational linguistics
and conceptual art. Adapting a computer program intended to model the
distribution of meaning in language, these six tracks explore musical
"meaning" with all of the serious playfulness of Arakawa and
Madeleine Gins' influential installation, The Mechanism of Meaning, from which Warner's
piece takes it title. Like language itself, it illuminates the infinite variety
of combinations and meanings that a modest collection of elements and rules can
produce.
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Mechanisms of Musical Meaning: Track 3 (MP3 file)
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notes
by Christoph Cox