Bang On A Can
Industry
(hear it)

My favorite Bang On A Can album, Industry has consistently strong compositions and a sonic and theoretical strain that runs through it. Louis Andriessen's Hoketus is the monster foundation, overwhelmingly mechanical in its unceasing rapid monochromatic chromatic alternation between two identical ensembles. It's rather unlike music, more like watching the inside of an ancient clock tower. Also awesome is Andriessen's Hout, which similarly expands on a simple concept in this case a canon in which the four parts (sax, piano, marimba, and electric guitar) are separated not by the length of a phrase, but by a sixteenth note, in effect creating a single melodic line in constant timbral travels from saxophone to piano.

The title track Industry by Michael Gordon is a solo piece for cello amplified and processed by the Ibanez Tube Screamer distortion pedal. Less theoretically precise, and sounding not exactly like industry in my view, the piece builds to a tremendous freakout. In '95, when this album arrived, freakouts were my thing, and I basically ignored the rest of the album once I heard this piece. Now when I hear noise I like it controlled, and Industry still interests me, because in reality the freakout is a very precise development of thematic material.

bb, 18 mar 08