The first recording of the playfully detailed improvisation of two NY collaborators with nearly two decades of work together--Andrea Parkins on accordion, objects & electronics, and Matthew Ostrowski on electronics--improvising in the studio for eight explorative works that seamlessly mesh acoustic and electronics, seemingly forward and backward at the same time!
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: USA Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at Harvest Works, in New York City, New York, by Paul Geluso.
"After nearly two decades of collaboration, both in live performance and installation projects, Elective Affinities marks the first recording project from Andrea Parkins and Matthew Ostrowski.
These eight works represent the current state of their shared sonic explorations, which have been driven by their philosophical as much as their musical interchanges over the years. A shared fascination with physical and musical gestures, densely interwoven meshes of events, and the aesthetics of interruption and breakage lay the groundwork for this album of intricate assemblages, recorded in real time.
Incorporating concrete sounds, both live and sampled, cutting-edge synthesis techniques, live processing, and instrumental and acoustic feedback, Elective Affinities is a study of valences, of molecular combinations and recombinations, of forms in states of development, flux, and collapse."-Infrequent Seams
"[...]
The result of two decades of collaboration, Elective Affinities melds interactive technology developer and academic Ostrowski, who has worked with David Behrman and John Butcher, with Parkins, whose playing experience encompasses groups with Ellery Eskelin and Ute Wasserman among others. Beginning with harmonized watery splashes that are designated by granular synthesis plus percussive chunks evolved at super collider speeds and vocalized cries in different pitches, it isn't until "Collisions", the second track that tremolo glissandi from Parkins' accordion becomes audible and is soon interrupted by powerful smacks that could come from a jackhammer. As swift accordion glissandi move across the sound field, occasional ring modulator pings and synthesized space tone variations swell and dissolve into timbres that seem not quiet human verbalization or in fact any animal's noises. Midway though, during "Discontinuity Function" and then "Solubility", the dual emphasis speeds up, decisively splintering, as Parkins' bellows-expanded stings and pushes or paralleled by Ostrowski's guitar-like twangs at a slower speed until the joint motorized flanges take on backwards-running tape qualities. Finally, the aptly named "Closure" is just that, synthesizing the dual challenges that have preceded that track. Before field-recorded voices signal the ending with rebroadcast human comments, accordion glissandi and stops have vanished within the polyphonic mass which otherwise is characterized by synthesized vibrations that resemble mutated pipe-organ tones.
Consistently more abstract than Elective Affinities is Intraspect's single track Here the guitar qualities of Thompson's Moog guitar are buried among washes of juddering textures issuing from Durrant's the modular synthesizer. Durant who has collaborated with Butcher and Burkard Beins among others, and also composes dance music, puts aside any terpsichorean inferences to produce intermittent shakes and oscillations. Contained in these concentrated vamps is a backdrop of steady drones divided among various sound layers. As the performance reaches its final climax, among the ever-shifting droning oscillations, guitar-like twangs from American Thompson, who also collaborates with choreographers finally, make their agreeable presence felt. Linking understated string fills and frails, the slowed down tremolo interface fades into reassuring hums. [...]"-Ken Waxman, JazzWord