Didkovsky, Nick

Tube Mouth Bow String

Label: Pogus Country: USA

Nick Didkovsky is perhaps best known from his avant-rock band Doctor Nerve, or his association with Fred Frith's Guitar Quartet or John Zorn's New Traditions in East Asian Bar Bands. Since the late 80's Didkovsky has worked increasingly with electronic compositions systems, which he applies to his various projects. This Pogus release focuses on combinations of computer and traditional instrumentation, particularly electric guitar and string quartet. Didkovsky's compositions and approaches have evolved into a subtle complement of both forms, and the pieces on Tube Mouth Bow String are both delicate and jarring, but ultimately fascinatingly appealing.

"Two of the compositions here, "She Closes Her Sister With Heavy Bones" and "What Sheep Herd," are process pieces whose scores fit very economically on one page. Each score specifies melodic material and a short set of rules. The music precipitates from the interaction between the score¹s specifications and the decisions that the musicians make during performance. By contrast, "Tube Mouth Bow String" is a through-composed piece which notates foot pedal movements, vocal behavior, and bowed string performance, overflowing very uneconomically onto many pages which we pasted onto large poster boards and set before each player. Though this piece leaves no real-time performance decisions to the ensemble, "Tube Mouth" is a process piece in a very real sense, as the process was first specified, executed, and auditioned in software, and finally transcribed to common music notation for live performers. Improvisation (simultaneously the easiest and the most difficult of all real-time process pieces to perform) is included here as well, with a solo MachineCore performance providing a bridge between "She Closes and Tube Mouth." Closing the CD, "Just a Voice That Bothered Him" sounds like it could have been composed systematically but evades rules instead, being composed intuitively by ear. The piece emerged in opposition to one vividly frustrating weekend of fruitless systematic composition, and for that, gets the last word."-Pogus