Immersion (DVD-Audio) [ENHANCED]

Merzbow (Performer, Composer), Meredith Monk (Composer, Performer), Pamela Z (Composer, Performer), Carl Stone (Composer), Phil Kline (Composer), Paul Dresher (Composer, Performer), Ingram Marshall (Composer), Lukas Ligeti (Composer, Performer), Pauline Oliveros (Composer, Performer), Bruce Odland (Composer), Ellen Fullman (Composer, Performer), Paul Dolden (Composer), Maggi Payne (Composer), n/a (Conductor), Ron Miles (Performer), Theo Bleckmann (Performer), Katie Geissinger (Performer), Ennis Smith (Performer)

Product Details

• Performer: Merzbow, Meredith Monk, Pamela Z, Paul Dresher, Lukas Ligeti, et al.
• Conductor: n/a
• Composer: Merzbow, Meredith Monk, Pamela Z, Carl Stone, Phil Kline, et al.
• DVD Audio (March 2, 2001)
• Please Note: This is a DVD-Audio disc which is playable on most DVD players as well as all DVD-Audio players. Click here for additional information regarding compatibility.
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Label: Starkland
• ASIN: B000059TOM
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #24,486 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
1. Immersion is as groundbreaking as DVD-Audios get. Some of the finest new-music and avant-garde composers alive today were asked to create works specifically for the new audio format, and the results are astounding. From Aphex Twin-inspired moments of sound bouncing from speaker to speaker, to more subdued, even haunting tracks in the traditional classical vein, this DVD-Audio is both eclectic and riveting. Works by Meredith Monk, Phil Kline, Ingram Marshall, and others take classical music to a whole new level. --Amazon.com

2. "Not only a fascinating array of musical innovation but a persuasive exploration of the possibilities of surround sound... The care that went into this disc is carried through to the stylish onscreen graphics [and] the excellent printed program notes."

-- Sound & Vision

"A number of 'firsts' in an exceptionally enjoyable program."

-- Billboard

"The adventurous Starkland label commissioned 13 composers... All the music is fascinating."

-- Stereophile

"A highly enjoyable group of pieces in a new medium... Almost certainly the first of its kind."

-- Fanfare

"First DVD-A released featuring works composed specifically for the new surround medium... some of the world's most ambitious electroacoustic composers."

-- Pro Sound News

"The variety of approaches is breathtaking and all are worth hearing."

-- Audiophile Audition

"A wonderful combination of musical innovation and stunning sounds."

-- New Classics

"Without exception, everyone delivered excellent work… The result is a very exciting collection of new music."

-- audiorevolution.com

"The results border on magical... at times, revolutionary."

-- Pulse

"Challenging but rarely either cacaphonic or overlush new-age, Immersion invites repeated listening. Sound quality throughout is excellent too."

-- Hi-Fi News

3. "The adventurous Starkland label commissioned 13 composers... All the music is fascinating." --Stereophile

Product Description
Immersion is a groundbreaking recording that lets listeners experience new music in high-resolution surround sound for the first time. All the music was commissioned by Starkland.

In the opening piece Live/Work, Pamela Z gives you a virtual surround tour of her studio with spatial precision. Bruce Odland's Tank places the listener in a huge underground water tank, where you hear Ron Miles' trumpet reverberating for 7 seconds, with an authentic reality not possible in stereo.

Maggi Payne's White Turbulence 2000 centers you in a dramatic circling pan of a convolved thunderous airplane, and then adds highly processed water sounds. Carl Stone shifts hyper-speed hallucinatory barrages from speaker to speaker in Luong Hai Ky Mi Gia.

Phil Kline's haunting piece, The Housatonic at Henry Street, is a "vision of enfolded time flowing through a place on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Background and foreground blurr as street sounds are recorded, then mixed with 'musical' material from computer and tape." The result situates you in "an imaginary surrounding landscape in which past and present hang out together."

Ellen Fullman's work Margaret Tuned the Radio In Between Two Stations employs Fullman's, Long String Instrument, which uses strings nearly 100 feet long.

Paul Dresher composd Steel for the Quadrachord, which he co-invented and constructed. It has four 14-foot long steel strings, with electric bass pick-ups at both ends. He writes that "both ends of the strings are acoustically 'active,' making the Quadrachord's sound inherently spatial... This aspect inspired its use in this surround sound composition."

Lukas Ligeti's work Propeller Island takes advantage of widely spaced playback speakers to explore his interest in polymetrics. He surrounds you with steel drums, West African balafons, and other percussion in multiple tempos.

In Sayonara Sirenade: 20/21, Pauline Oliveros draws on materials from a 1966 spatially-presented improvisation. "Extracting sounds from the old piece, I used today's software to create new tracks, adding placement and movement The flatness of stereo became fullness in surround sound."

The Canadian composer Paul Dolden explores multiple tempos by composing, recording, and mixing hundreds simultaneous musical parts. Twilight's Dance wraps his dense, driving rhythms around you, clarifying his intense, polyrhythmic activity beyond stereo's limitations.

Likely the world's leading Noise composer, Japan's Masami Akita has released over 200 recordings under the name Merzbow. He says: "2000 combines two stereo multiple noise loops, transformed in real time by different pan effects, with a monaural subsonic bass loop and a high feedback loop. The work especially aims to create accidental Doppler crash effects from the sounds surrounding each other."

Ingram Marshall's piece Sighs and Murmurs: A SeaSong is based on his memories of an isolated, "austerely beautiful white farm house" in Nova Scotia. "One's feeling of solitude was tempered by an underlying sense of souls, long departed, who had once dwelt there. " You hear murmuring voices, a poignant piano melody, and sea sounds that evoke strangely familiar memories.

The DVD ends with an ethereal vocal work from Meredith Monk. She writes, "In Eclipse Variations I was interested in the idea of a new sound being revealed when another one disappears, " noting, "In surround sound, the piece becomes a suspended ring of sound, with the voices moving across the space, colliding, leaning, and creating beats in the air."

The comprehensive 32-page booklet has Introductions from critic Kyle Gann, surround authority Tomlinson Holman, and the CD's producer Tom Steenland.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, June 18, 2001

By	"surroundguy" (Peripatetic) - See all my reviews

This amazing DVD-Audio release explores surround sound more extensively than any other DVD-Audio that I've heard (or know of). I've never experienced anything like it. All the content here is new, and was put together especially for surround sound, unlike most other DVD-Audio recordings which tend to be re-releases of older pop/rock stuff. There are 13 different, short pieces here. In the first piece Live/Work, the performer (Pamela Z) provides a verbal, circular tour of her studio (a good way to see how consistent your surround setup is). In Tank (by Bruce Odland), you hear a trumpet playing inside a water tank with a long echo, along with some percussion. This is one of the most realistic depictions of a three-dimensional space I've ever heard. White Turbulence 2000 (by Maggi Payne) slowly changes with some complex sound processing. Luong Hai Ky Mi Gia (Carl Stone) moves really fast, with fragments of somewhat recognizable sound zooming all around you. The Housatonic at Henry Street (by Phil Kline) is a moving, haunting piece that uses multiple boomboxes and street sounds to evoke a street corner in New York City. A piece by Ellen Fullman uses layers of recordings of an instrument she invented that has strings about 100 feet long. Propeller Island (Lukas Ligeti) has different kinds of colorful percussion instruments tapping out different rhythms. Steel is attractive and is performed on the Quadrachord, an instrument invented by the composer Paul Dresher. Sayonara Sirenade 20/21 (by Pauline Oliveros) uses older electronic music sounds in a surround sound setting. Twilight's Dance (by Paul Dolden) has driving rhythms that lead to a big, exciting ending. 2000 presents intense "noise" music that apparently is typical of the composer Merzbow. Sighs and Murmurs, A Sea Song (by Ingram Marshal) is a lanquid, calm piece. The recording ends with Eclipse Variations, a lovely work by Meredith Monk that has layers of sustained voices that float in and out, creating an other-worldly ambiance. Visually, each piece has several slides that change as the piece progresses. (This is actually more advanced than some of the other rock DVD-Audio releases I've encountered.) There is also a full booklet that gives thorough info about all these composers and their pieces. The sound quality is superb - better than CD, better than regular (video) DVDs. I hope it's clear this is leading-edge music; it's not mainstream pop. Also, if you don't have a DVD-Audio player, the same content will play via a regular DVD-Video player. Overall, Immersion is an extraordinary recording, and perhaps is the most advanced and sophisticated DVD-Audio recording yet released. It certainly helps support the idea, put forth by some, that DVD-Audio will replace CDs. Stereo sounds pretty flat and boring after you've heard good surround. I think anyone who cares about surround sound should hear Immersion. Let's hope there is more like this.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars adventurous, carefully made, not random, November 6, 2003

By	"big_brad" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I've owned this adventurous DVD for some time now. Today, while at Amazon, I thought I'd cruise by and see what others had to say. Boy, was I surprised.

First, I was surprised that some people did not find this groundbreaking music to be as fascinating as I do. Well, tastes vary. But still, I was shocked at how inaccurate some of the comments are here. For example, someone says there is almost no rhythm here, overlooking the fact that some of these pieces (such as Ligeti, Dolden) are primarily ABOUT rhythm, and others (such as Odland, Dresher, Marshall) clearly have pulse/rhythm. And some say the sounds are all random, which is absurd. Even if listening doesn't show you the composers carefully worked on these pieces, the notes clearly reveal how the composers carefully thought about and put together these works. (The notes even show exceprts of 2 music scores - hardly random!)

I could go on, but you get the idea. I think what has happened here is that some listeners only know a limited range of ways that sounds can be expressive, and when they hear something really different they react by calling it random noise. In terms of basic information, this is completely inaccurate, and does a disservice to the conscientious composers on this recording, as well as others reading here.

If you're confused by the wide variety of comments here, for some objectivity I suggest checking out the Editorial/magazine comments that Amazon has posted here. I think you'll find they share my enthusiasm for this surround DVD.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting....but not entertaining, August 22, 2004

By	D. Gutterud "SDave" (St. Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just buy that fancy new DVD-A system and looking for something to show off the great sound? This disk will come in handy for that once or twice.

Looking for great music to play periodically for your listening enjoyment? Look somewhere else because this "music" was designed to show off the strenghths of the surround sound medium - not to entertain people.

Most of the tracks show off the amazing capabilities of a good surround sound system but I found myself hitting fast forward after a couple minutes of each track. That was the first time through the DVD! I tried to listen to it a 2nd time a few weeks ago to see if maybe I missed something the first time but no, it just isn't something that is enjoyable to listen to.

Find some music you like - don't waster your cash on this DVD. In fact - I'll send you this one, you can listen to it once, then pass it on to the next person for their one use, etc.