There's drone music and then there's drone music. The Slow Creep of Convenience (the title, along with much else, is discussed in the lengthy conversation between Pateras and Veltheim that's included inq a booklet that comes with the CD) is a 50-minute work for pipe organ (Pateras) and electric violin (Veltheim) which the latter describes as "a formless piece...finding a focus on the present without reference to what's come before or what will come after." The music more or less centers on a given pitch for some period of time — more accurately, around a given pitch — but shifts slightly every so often.

As with all good drone music, the depth and enormity of the revealed layers are what matter, the enormous wealth of tones and timbres that emerge from such a seemingly simple process. The musicians are concerned with developing ripostes to the current environment of hyper-connectedness and the affiliated instant gratification. The latter, of course, falls well within the purview of countless thousands of experimental music works but the aforementioned attempt at formlessness cuts down that number to a relative few. Morton Feldman took a similar tack in his longer works, trying to place each note with reference only to the preceding one and trusting that form would somehow emerge. Using long-held tones, as here, the result is different, refreshingly so. For all the seeming similarity in overall sound, there's a very refreshing quality in play — endless surprise even if the deviation off the pre-existing path is technically minute.

Theoretics aside, this is an absolutely wonderful sound-world in which to get lost: just enough bitterness to negate any vestige of easily digestible flow but more than enough richness of tone to enable listen after listen, always confident that one will hear more. A stunning recording.