Stereo Music for Serge Modular Prototype (Part One)
3
Stereo Music for Serge Modular Prototype (Part Two)
4
Stereo Music for Serge Modular Prototype (Part Three)
5
Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar and Computer
6
Stereo Music for Farfisa Compact Duo Deluxe, Drum Kit
7
Stereo Music for Acoustic Guitar, Buchla Music Box 100, Hewlett Packard Model 236 Oscillator, Electric Guitar and Computer (Part One)
8
Stereo Music for Acoustic Guitar, Buchla Music Box 100, Hewlett Packard Model 236 Oscillator, Electric Guitar and Computer (Part Two)
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Multiples was recorded at the Harvard University studios where a stash of vintage synthesizers & electronics was made available to Keith Fullerton Whitman during his time as a lecturer there.
Review
...where Zen meets experimental physics and beauty can be found in every pattern. -- Pitchfork April 8, 2005
...while there's no compromise to the integrity of its abstract leanings, it's both eminently accessible and musical. -- Textura May 2005
Superlative and unpredictable work that startles, surprises and inspires. -- Godsend online May 1, 2005
Whitman's not only ahead of the electronic world, he is paving the roads others will be traveling upon. -- All Music Guide
Product details
Product Dimensions
:
5.64 x 0.4 x 4.99 inches; 3.52 ounces
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
it's a bit boring. I like his live performances on You Tube. but like many other artists of this type, it doesn't work very well when he puts it onto CD. Something gets lost. something big.
I've never listened to Whitman's works before, and my only interest in Multiples was because of its use of the Buchla Music Box. I just finished reading the book Analog Days, and the authors made a big deal about this non-standard synth that came out in the 60's at about the same time the Moog did (Robert Moog lived on the east coast, and Buchla on the west, and their approaches to modular synth design were polar opposites). I got Multiples to hear the Buchla. The album sounds like a New Age collection of rambling pieces that combine things that sound a little like pianos with things that sound a little like cellos and so on, with the higher, brighter notes repeated sequencer like through-out the song with minor variations. I'd be more impressed if this had come out 30-40 years earlier, when electronic music was still in a kind of infancy and these machines were still all-new. As it stands, Multiples is retro, and I'm not sure if retro is hot now or not. It's listenable, but probably best used as background when you're busy working on something else.
I can appreciate how Whitman went to harvard and dicked around with their instrument archive more than I have to like it. Don't get me wrong, I am a massive fan of the ambient-drone-classical-noise genre a la Stars of the Lid, Jessica Rylan, david lee myers and ellen band, home made electronics, bending circuits, all that geeky know all that Keith Whitman embraces. But frankly I find his music unbearable. Which is a shame because he's probably still riding on that glowing but unknowing review @ pitchfork which has made him a demigod in many peoples eyes [oh my GOD, what thought provoking and intelligent titles 'Stereo Music For Acoustic Guitar, Buchla Music Box 100, Hewlett Packard Model 236 Oscillator, Electric Guitar And Computer (Part One) ' the kind of titles that have tried so hard to erase so much pretense that it loops back around and you want to shoot yourself).
Quite like the 'music itself'. I can imagine the guy at pitchfork, puffing at a pipe, Wittgenstein on hand, truly pretending to 'get' Stereo Music for Hi Hat. Some people say something this audacious is genius, I say something/one this audacious is scary because he could almost pass for a musician, if you forget that the first half of his career was built drilling drum-and-bass computer programming in your brain via the Hrvatski cell tower. Whitman is NOT a musician. He has no control over the often interesting sounds he produces from obscre machinery, the moment he begins to bring it together with 'stereo music for farfisa compact duo deluxe', he loses it all over again. What starts with a promising organ line and simple but satisfying drum pattern spirals into another useless mess of drone drone and drone. its as if his random clicking and chirping is a safety net for lack of compositional skills-- I would appreciate the dronage more if he had proven himself through some other avenue as a musician first, not just academically but intuitively.
starting with tweaks, dots, loops and whistles and ending with arpgiated piano and organ drone I felt like I was on the dark side of the moon . . . . .yet warm . . .
KFW's influences are pretty obvious, and he's happy to reveal them - Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Christoph Heeman. He knows all about tone clusters, overtones and shifting minimal rhythms. But the textures on 'Multiples' are so beautiful that it's never just an academic exercise. This is somewhere between 60s and 70s American minimalism and the more psychedelic analog drone-work of Kawabata Makoto (when he's not cracking skulls with Acid Mothers Temple) or Yamazaki Maso (when he's not cracking skulls as Masonna). One thing it's NOT is ambient, even if some of the treatments are a little Eno-esque.
There are signs here that Whitman is outgrowing his influencers, particularly on the glorious final piece (the last two tracks), and developing a really individual voice. He is certainly worth watching carefully. For now, 'Multiples' fills that nagging gap where you want something more sensual than conservatoire minimalism but more musically structured than psych-drone.
Open Web Player
