Search - "Blue" Gene Tyranny :: Take Your Time

"Blue" Gene Tyranny
Take Your Time
Genres: Dance & Electronic, Special Interest, New Age, Classical

Track Listings (9) - Disc #1
1. Song No. 1 "Reset," from The Driver's Son, take one
2. Remember to Say This
3. The Drifter, free reading
4. A Letter from Home, the harmonic branching
5. Wish I Had Said That (L'Esprit de l'escalier)
6. Song No. 1, from The Driver's Song, take two
7. Meditation: Nothing's Changed, Everything's Changed
8. Study for Song No. 34, "Empathy," from The Driver's Son
9. Spirit

CD Details

All Artists: "Blue" Gene Tyranny
Title: Take Your Time
Members Wishing: 1
Total Copies: 0
Label: Lovely Music
Original Release Date: 1/1/2003
Re-Release Date: 7/29/2003
Genres: Dance & Electronic, Special Interest, New Age, Classical
Styles: Electronica, Techno, Instruments, Electronic
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 745295106623

Synopsis

Album Description

A CD of works for solo piano. "Thirty-five of the 36 songs in this 'audio storyboard' are individually built around an atmospheric primary chord, counter-rhythms, and a body of notes which creates a potential melody that unfolds bit by bit. 'The Driver's Son' is scored for a narrator, a chorus of 5 people creating 15 voices, an electronically modified orchestra of folk and concert instruments and parts for a lighting designer and a live video animator known as The Guide. The realization for electro-magnetically stimulated piano (1993) heard here employs feedback circuit devices, designed by composer David Meschter, that initiate subtle sustaining tones when placed on the strings. The slowly appearing, ethereal sounds in this piece are 'artificial harmonics' that resonate high in the piano strings when one chord is silently depressed and another chord of the same form but a half-step lower is loudly struck and quickly released. 36 of these, interlaced with 36 'natural harmonics,' were recorded and then the initial loud attack was removed with computer editing. This procedure left a bed of subtle, non-corporeal sounds that seem to lie on the surface of the strings like a cloud, and allowed listeners to hear sounds that normally are only perceived by the pianist sitting a few feet away from the strings."

CD Reviews

Stimulating musical experience

Frank Ettenberg | Wien, Austria | 01/15/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Take Your Time by Blue Gene Tyranny (2003)is the first piece I've

purchased by this composer. I knew him over 40 years ago in Ann Arbor

when he was already composing and was associated with alternative

composers from the Once Group. As Tyranny, aka Robert Sheff ( birth name)

always seemed to be a loner, with his own quirky style and preferences, he

obviously has remained true to his person and his individual style. It interests me that amidst all the very obscure and 'detached' expressions coming from his still-active Once composer- Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma-contemporaries, this music significantly aspires to be something lovely and emotionally espouses a kind of nostalgia. As I listen to it, it reminds me of Eric Satie, whose statement similarly departed from that of his Parisian conetemporaries Debussy and Ravel. Like Satie, Tyranny

remains cavalier, even irreverent when it comes to playing schmalz. His

embrace of technological wizardry is smartly used to create a kind of disembodied, artifical expression of something emotional ( esp in tracks

7 and 9 ). At their root, there is something deeply personal and compelling about many of these pieces. Like it or not, I find his statement truly expressive. I wish this music could find its

way to less obscure venues so it might be heard by more music enthusiasts

( instead of so typically being linked to an obscure creative 'scene,'

headed by Robert Ashley ).

"