02/25/2021
This week we're releasing a single, Side A, from Michael Gordon's "8" — an hourlong work for eight cellos. The full album is released April 16.
Click to stream/download:
https://www.bangonacansound.com/ #!details?id=33046325
Gordon's music has been used in commercials (Apple iPhone), films (Steve McQueen's Hunger), documentaries (NC Heiken's Kimjongilia) and art films (Bill Morrison's Decasia).
"8" is part of a series of works Gordon started with Timber for six percussionists playing amplified simantras, and includes Rushes for seven bassoonists and Amplified for four electric guitarists. Each of these works is meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer. The series for like-instruments is meant to be played seamlessly and grow to encompass an entire day.
The innovation in this piece is that the sound travels around the circle in both directions. If you are in the middle of the circle, you can hear the dimensionality and perspective of the sound clearly. If you put on headphones and listen closely to the recording, you can hear the bass notes traveling in space independently of the melody line. Each cellist plays both the melody and the bass, switching back and forth in a choreography of musical roles.
This perspective of sound is a bit like moving from two-dimensional art to three-dimensional art. Sound isn’t a flat line — now it takes on multiple roles in space and time. It is a sculpture of three-dimensions.
The Bang on a Can Sound is a one-stop licensing library of over 900 tracks of music that is equal parts innovative, stark, complex and minimal. Some of it is electronic, some is 'a ca****la', some is symphonic and epic, some is intimate and expressive, but all of it is unique and unlike any other mu...
