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Asher - Intervals
RATED: 10 / 10
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reviewed by
David Velez
9/5/2008
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Intervals has a lot of musical elements (mostly piano chords), but "the music" is very contextualized: "it" doesn't quite tell a story but relates the listener to outward stories in a very nostalgic and distant way.
Intervals is like finding a music box in the debris of the ruins of a war, and playing it wondering who it did belong to, and what happened around it when it played. The static watery sonic atmospheres of Intervals evoke old untuned radios creating a beautiful sensation of detachment, companion and contemplation.
To complement the review of this release, I made a few questions to Asher about Intervals and here is what he had to say.
Q. What environment were you in when you recorded these pieces and what do you think were the elements in your surroundings that caused the album to sound the way it does?
A.. The album was made during a relatively brief period of time and in two stages. for a week last august I was staying on the campus of goddard college in Vermont. The campus is in a fairly rural area but very near a main road, there are small old buildings, open fields and woods; there also must be a small airport nearby for there are small planes which fly overhead with some regularity. I made many short recordings during this time with the intention of creating a specific work once I returned home and had access to my studio equipment. I think that during this time I was starting to form an idea of how the finished piece would be made, but I was mainly concerned with just having enough material to work with. I documented sounds of the environment as well as recordings of short improvisations on a variety of pianos on the campus, but I tried to view these efforts with the same concerns. When I returned home I started going through the material and putting it through the recording processes which I use in my studio; I would say that I think of this as a second environment, not my neighborhood in Somerville or my home, (though they probably did have an effect) but the interior environments of the equipment which I use in my studio. The sound reproducing characteristics of my various samplers and effects play a strong role in coloring the sound of the finished album.
Q. If INTERVALS were to become the soundtrack of a short film, what could you tell us about that film?
A. This is a difficult question for me to answer. I guess I hope that there are many possibilities for images which could be accompanied by this work; but I will say that it in not of great interest to me to imagine a film to which this work could serve as a soundtrack, rather I hope that it can become a partial soundtrack to the listener's everyday life.
Q. If you could recommend or describe a perfect scenario/space to listen to INTERVALS, what would it be?
A. Well my main hopes for this work was the possibility that it could become part of a personal environment, a piece one could live with and hear in different ways over time. perhaps this is a lot to ask of listeners who are surrounded by so many choices of what to listen to, but if we are talking about an ideal scenario, I hope that listeners can take ownership of the piece and be creative about the way they approach listening to this work. Whether that means just listening to it in a so called normal way, or having it shuffle in repeat for hours at low volume, or listening to it simultaneously with other recordings etc. I'd like to think of it a potential addition to the sound environment of a personal or public space, but one which adds as much as it takes away.
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Intervals is one of Asher's best releases to date, a personal favorite and a work I really advice to listen. |
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