Score
Rameaustein : for 2 iPads, iPhone and electric keyboard / Michael Kieran Harvey.
Library shelf no. 786.74/HAR 1 [Available for loan]
Work Overview
"The audio loop and the animated GIF are perhaps defining aspects of late 20th and early 21st century popular culture. Existential expressions of just how deeply embedded repetition is within our lives. Perhaps in the broadest possible cultural material terms the loop is a manifestation of theological concepts of resurrection and reincarnation." Review of Adrian Corker's 'Music for Lock Grooves', The Wire.
The huge tosserisms of this review of a piece of banal automated dance music led me to fuse the idiom of the repetitious lock groove with the idioms of both contrapuntal Rameau and Rammstein's stadium rock in the hope of producing a deformed sonic offspring that would take revenge on such pretentiousness. Both Rameau and Rammstein are inheritors of Enlightenment ideals, crusading through their music against superstition and the dark forces of nationalist romanticism in favour of a humanist and science-based ethos. Rameaustein, like Frankenstein's daemon, is the result, and may live on, being a mongrel chimera of 20th/21st century popular culture and French rationalism, therefore (hopefully) made of sterner stuff than loops and gifs. Of course, there is every chance it is just as pretentious as that which it pillories, but there's no harm in the attempt. It is the second of a series of works exploring the ostentatiousness generated by popular digital platforms, which began with the soprano and percussion duo "Inside the World of the Digital Narcissist" (2019).
Work Details
Year: 2019
Instrumentation: iPhone equipped with sequencer app (e.g. AudioKit Synth One), iPads (2) equipped with sequencer app, Electric keyboard split into kit and organ at Eb3, Mixer/PA.
Duration: 10 min.
Difficulty: Advanced — skilled improvising required, multi-platform multi-tasking
Dedication note: Dedicated to Brian Ritchie
Commission note: Commissioned by Lady Franklin Gallery, TAS
First performance: at Kunanyi and co. (Lady Franklin Gallery) on 17 Nov 2019
The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc associated with this work:
ELP, Deep Purple, Rammstein
Can be performed by 1, 2 or 3 players.
Subjects
- Influenced by: Popular music
Performances of this work
17 Nov 2019: at Kunanyi and co. (Lady Franklin Gallery).
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