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to excerpt
Mp3s and real audio files are available from Kalvos & Damian:
works by composers who reacted to the September 11 tragedy at www.kalvos.org/tragedy.html
Notes
S.O.S.W.T.C. follows previous releases Tronik Involutions (1996)
and Inscapes From Exile (1998) as a solo electronic album, but
departs in a new direction with the use concrete and indefinite pitch
percussion samples are the core of the sound design, along with pitched
and sliding tones. The sound components are controlled via the touch sensitivity
of the keyboard so that the improvisation literally ‘sculpts’ the sound,
allowing tri-dimensional control of melody, harmony and color. I have
explored concrete in earlier Piano Works (1983) and Concerto
For Piano And Orchestral Memory (1984), using ‘noise’ loops – pinball
machines, cars in the rain - as background. In S.O.S.W.T.C., the technology
is used to remodel concrete into instrumental color.
The general timing of S.O.S.W.T.C. follows the short-long morse code sequence of a S.O.S., i.e., three short, three long, three short. The succession of the 16 sections establishes a subliminal twin symmetry, with a disrupted S.O.S. (two short instead of three) at the beginning and the end.
The performance is direct, spontaneous, in tune with real life. One might identify impressions of floating in space, of descending like a leaf slowly falling from a tree; a sense of vulnerability, of a growling, ominous presence, of chaos, or merely of something wrong underneath the surface. If the piece was composed in reaction to the events surrounding the World Trade Center collapse, it is neither morbid nor elegiac. It is simply, in a Buddhist sense, a comment on reality without judgment, a meditation on the collective consciousness of the time. The experience – physical, emotional, spiritual – becomes awareness, and the awareness becomes music.
Elodie Lauten, November 26, 2001