source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 08:31:26 -0800 From: "John H. Chalmers" From: mclaren Subject: Xenharmonic CDs --- Time once again to give brief reviews of the latest xenharmonic laser cookies... First and most impressive, Marc Battier's "Transparence." This CD is available from EMF, Joel Chabade's Electronic Music Foundation. Their catalog is available on-line from emusic@aol.com. Battier uses a single sentence from Henry Chopin as source material for a virtuoso set of digital signal processing manipulations. This CD is beautiful, non-12-sounding, and endlessly varied and interesting. Many of the manipulations appear to center around resonant filters: the effect is to pick out distinctly non-12 pitches and generate effects which sound nothing like the original material. The entire CD can be thought of as a giant set of "variations on a theme" of a single acoustic input. Highly recommended! Next, Anna Homler's "Do Ya Sa Di Do." Ms. Homler specializes is singing what sound like Japanese or Korean chants against sampler- manipulated electronic backgrounds. The net effect is often impressive, and distinctly outside the standard 12-tone equal-tempered scale. The most xenharmonic tracks on this CD are No. 1, in which she fringes her chant with an aureole of xenharmonic "inflexional" pitches (as in Balinese and Javanese vocal music, where slendro and pelog are generally used as a pont of departure, or as in the vocal xenharmonies of Sinead O'Connor, Louis Armstrong, Ofrah Haza, et alii). Most wildly microtonal, however, is track 9--where Ms. Homler produces squeaks and whistles which the human vocal track does not appear to have been designed to accomodate. The effect is xenharmonic, beautiful, and altogether exotic. The CD is available from: Homler, PO Box 48770, Los Angeles CA 90048. Ben Johnston's "Calamity Jane to her Daughter" on the CD "Urban Diva" is an impressive example of extended just intonation. This just array appears to extend upward to around 31-limit, and offers a formidable challenge to the aspiring po-mo vocalist. Forunately, soprano Dora Ohrenstein is more than up to the challenge. Her rendition proves both sonically idirescent and emotionally compelling. *Highly* recommended! The CD "Urban Diva" is available from Composer's Recordings Inc., 73 Spring St., New York NY 10012- 5800, phone # (212) 941-9673. Last and decidedly least: Chris Brown's "Lava." This composition combines electronically manipulated sounds with live percussion and digital keyboards. Alas, the piece quickly grows unbearably repetitive and wearisome. Most of the electronic manipulations involve uninteresting delay or filter effects applied to inherently ugly percussive sounds. The result is less than impressive. My patience did not extend to the end of this CD. Not recommended. --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 17 Dec 1995 17:48 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA24152; Sun, 17 Dec 1995 08:48:09 -0800 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 08:48:09 -0800 Message-Id: <9512170815.aa22014@cyber.cyber.net> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu