[pc0609-02] Greg Surges solid state (2009)

Greg Surges, an US-based composer with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours in composition and music technology, creates both electroacoustic and contemporary classic works that incorporate improvisations, algorithms, instructions for sound manipulation and open forms with variable passages. An introduction to these concepts provides his first album for the Petcord netlabel, “Solid State” with three works, one of these in two different versions (hence the total of four tracks).

Swarm, the opener, can be considered an experiment in technology with distinct sections that tries to avoid ambient drone stereotypes and opts for unrest instead and uses the positioning of sound (panning) as part of the composition, too. Solid State, is a work for a Laptop ensemble and a piano solist, whose input is used as “raw source” that is further processed by the participants until a solid state of uniform sonority is reached. 153 x 56, a work for traditional instruments, utilises variable elements that rely on the participants’ imagination and creativity and and can lead at times to entirely different results, as the two versions included on the release demonstrate.

Olliver Wichmann

http://www.archive.org/details/pc0609-02

http://www.petcord.com/