GINO ROBAIR: Singular Pleasures (percussion music for listening and sampling...)

Titles:

1. Gnat Opener
2. A Fascinating Instability
3. Fricatives in Bovine Portraiture
4. Venables on the In and Out of Course
5. Free Use of the Halving Principle
6. The Utility of Continuous Joinings
7. Catalog of Supplementary Strokes
8. St. Andrew's mark
9. Ringing Systems
10. Motor(goat) Brool
11. Thumbfarben
12. Paths of Great Resistance
13. There's a little ambiguity over there among the blue bells
14. Randomly Weighted Curling Butoh

Tom Nunn designed and built The Gnat used on tracks 1 & 10.

This music is improvised, both out of desire and necessity.

"I approach whatever drums I happen to be using as a set of surfaces which I "prepare" using an array of elements I carry with me. This often includes drum sticks, motors, marbles, cloth mutes, Ebows, brushes, small cymbals, woodblocks, game calls, dog toys, a suckerball, etc. You might consider this collection of stuff as the 'score' for these pieces.

"What intrigues me most at the moment are the complex resonating characteristics of a drum covered with objects. It combines a fascination with sculpture and architecture with the exploration of unpredictable interaction. This partitioning of the different drum heads develops organically throughout the course of an improvisation, changing rapidly and incrementally. (Imagine Calder interpreting all of the parts to Varese's Ionisation at once.)

"Many of the instruments on this recording, a few of which were never intended to be instruments, were given to me by friends. However, some of the instruments have since deteriorated or become unusable. Usually I hope for the final moment of an instrument to happen during a concert or recording -- and a few of those occured during this session. Most notably, the final gasps of the motor on track 10."

More about Gino Robair is available here.

(In the U.S.)

(International)