Phase Patterns/Pendulum Music/Piano Phase/Four Organs

Four Organs and Phase Patterns have an edge that comes directly from the piercing tones of the electric keyboards used, finding fruitful ground between Reich's phase work and a more repetitive singularity of phrases that forces undivided attention on the compositional increments. Pendulum Music is the true oddity here, separated into three iterations that each lasts around five minutes. The piece is written for dangling microphones that sway like pendulums over a speaker, eliciting feedback that sounds positively like a bass or contrabass clarinet. Of course this work falls somewhere between composition and performance art, but it works brilliantly--leaving the listener convinced that the sonorities are acoustic (not to mention human) in origin. --Andrew Bartlett