Search - Alvin Curran :: Toto Angelica

This release stylistically follows in the wake of his Tzadik release, Animal Behavior, to the extent that a plethora of alienated, musical sounds become a single piece of music when altered and thoughtfully mixed together. During his Angelica Festival performance (which was the impetus for this recording), his computer crashed and, by means of a pre-recorded phoneme voice, uttered the syllables, 'It's not my fault. Please make sure the Apple Talking Network is connected.' This happy accident inspired Curran to re-evaluate both our penchant to so strongly rely on technology, and the propitious results when such technology leads the artist into unexplored and unimagined territories by reason of necessity. From this standpoint, the composer examined the entire recordings from all 10 past Angelica Festivals from 1991 to 2001, and set about to mix disparate but somehow complimentary performances together to create a new work. These are otherwise impossible combinations: Fred Frith plays with two Eskimo women. Pavarotti plays with Mike Patton, etc. that logically should not work. But as the world becomes smaller and smaller by means of technology, by design, these instances certainly do. The outcome, while certainly intense, is by no means a nod to the world of lazily thrown together noises or shock-tastic-shivarees; instead, Curran's penchant to carefully consider all of the elements at his disposal left him with a full palette of possibilities for excellence and innovation.