Showing posts with label taktus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taktus. Show all posts

Friday, December 16, 2016

Recording: Taktus

Artist: Taktus

Song: 28 Organ [composer: Aphex Twin]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Music Gallery Departures Series), November 20, 2016.

Taktus - 28 Organ

On the first really cold day of the year, The Tranzac's furnace was struggling to keep up but there were plenty of warm sounds in the Main Hall. Percussion duo Taktus, last seen presenting their interpretations of Anne Southam's "Glass Houses" for marimbas, still had a couple of those pieces in their repertoire for this set. But they're also torquing into a new project, this time resituating some of Aphex Twin's "jynweythek ylow" [mechanical music] into the analog world. The two composers were, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather simpatico: Southam's piano music is not only the work of a pioneering electronic musician, but also contains rigorous internal structures (her "Glass Houses #8" sounds like mathematics heading down to the islands for a tropical vacation). That meant those pieces fit in just fine beside another great "pattern" composer. (The pair also pulled from some interesting corners of the Aphex Twin catalogue, including this piece which emerged on last year's soundcloud "leak".)

[The Departures Series heads home for the holidays, so to speak, with an onsite foray to the Music Gallery proper to host American composer, sound artist, and electroacoustic performer Andrea Parkins. She'll be joined by Lina Allemano, Germaine Liu, Jason Doell for an improvised electroacoustic set next Tuesday (December 20th). There will also be sets from Joyfultalk and Magic Hour.]

Friday, September 18, 2015

Recording: Taktus

Artist: Taktus

Song: Glass Houses No. 1

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection 2015), September 5, 2015.

Taktus - Glass Houses No. 1

You can read my general notes on the festival here. Earlier this year, Greg Harrison and Jonny Smith released the excellent Glass Houses for Marimba, which rearranges Ann Southam's hauntingly-beautiful minimal piano variations for two marimbas. This fusion of the rigourous compositions and the instruments' warm tones created a stately island of calm in the middle of the afternoon's hustle-bustle. This in situ recording, complete with background mutterings and vehicular roars, shows the music enfolding itself into its environment.