Tonight on A Different Nature we will listen to parts of a couple of experimental classics from the late 1970s that have been recently re-issued.
Roger Doyle's Thalia, originally came out on CBS Classics in 1978. Acting as a sort of shamanic extension of Gaelic bardic traditions, Doyle guides the listener through labyrinthine dimensions, vacillating cartoonish tape FX with stark synth pulses, fragments of ‘Danny Boy’ and the unsettling sound of a woman wailing or even keening (a lament for the dead) in only the first minutes, the piece spirals over two sides between obtuse electronics and jump-cuts to melancholy strums, airborne melody and rabid dissonance with the natural quality of Ireland’s ever-shifting interplay of sun, rain and clouds.
Juan Hidalgo's "Rrose Sélavy" originally came out on Cramps Records in 1977. The work is a queer examination of the role of language in socially constructing and maintaining gender roles. As a composition, it expresses this with the analogy of a musical language and then gets to work disrupting compositional norms. A lullabyish, disorientatingly unpredictable sequence on the celesta is gradually accompanied by more and more layers of instruments and textures.
Please note, tonight's A Different Nature will only be an hour long. At around 9 pm we will be airing The Slant's final show at the Doug Fir.
- KBOO