The first 4 songs of this album are named A, AA, AAA, and AAAA. The next 4 are named B, BB, BBB, and BBBB.
All 8 songs are exactly 3 minutes and 42 seconds long.
New Tendencies is the nom de guerre for Matt Nish-Lapidus, often “emenel” on various social medias.
Nish-Lapidus describes themselves as, “an artist and musician based in Toronto/Tkaronto. I work in and around computation, thinking about its histories, politics, culture, and computation-as-material. My main efforts right now are around computational poetics, expanded sculpture, and net art. I believe computers could be something different in the world, and try to embody that in my work and life…I make music mainly as New Tendencies, but sometimes under other names and used to play in a number of punk/post-punk bands in addition to my more experimental/electronic/computer music and sound art.”
The music is primarily rhythmic. For the pieces, in general, there are two similar but independent rhythmic motifs going on in the far right and left channels. There is a pulse in the middle. The various “A” and “B” iterations with the same number of letters seem to start with similar parameters, i.e. “A” is similar to “B” and “AA” is similar to “BB”. The AAA and BBB pieces have the most some panning pitch variation action along with the rhythmic pulsations. The sound sources, if they are other than algorithmic, sound a bit like typewriters or dragging a guitar pick across guitar strings.
Really, I can’t describe it any better than he does, “Decomposing rhythm skitters across time.”
In any case, somehow it does manage to sustain interest, despite the fact that each piece seems to be the musical equivalent of several wind up toys released simultaneously.
If I had to pick a favorite track, it would be “BBB”.
“DO NOT POWER DOWN
Recorded in Toronto by Matt Nish-Lapidus, June 2020″
#SuperPang #SP13 #ForceReset