Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Song: [second piece]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant XI – Night 1), October 13, 2016.

Deenzi - [second piece]

This year's X Avant festival began with a future-focused night that hewed toward electronic music, leading off with some sci-fi/wuxia improvised soundscapes from Heidi Chan and Andy Yue. Mixing Chan's flutes and modular synth with Yue's electronics, there's some really fascinating textures here — and a keep-'em-guessing approach for anyone trying to reverse-engineer these sounds after the fact. Parts that might sound looped (like Yue's percussion lines) were, in fact, played live on a MIDI keyb, meaning that pattern variations could suddenly creep in at unexpected places. And in this piece, Chan added some impromptu electroacoustic found-sound elements by scratching a finger on her microphone to add to a little bit of electro-frisson.