Review by Elise Kermani
In grad school, one of my very wise art professors stated a definition of music as "any sound that can be danced to." At the time I thought that was too narrow of a definition, as I was trying to push the borders of new music composition. Some music was never meant to be danced to. But she was right. Even the most experimental of music can be danced to; in fact, you can move your body to any sort of organized sound—and, the most experimental is especially beloved by contemporary choreographers.
In the late 1980s—my early days of music composition—I sought out dancers because they seemed to desire unusual sounds for their choreography. Twenty years later, I am still working with dancers and they are still craving the new and the daring in music. They usually do not need—nor do they want—a steady beat. And the more original it sounds, that is, the less derivative of any other music, the better.
Candle Nine's The Muse in the Machine is the sort of music that borders on the danceable (by everyone, not just professional dancers) and the experimental. Perhaps it is not on the most extreme border of experimental, yet it is not on the "normal electronica" side you'd find in dance nightclubs either. There is a difference between "electronica" and "electronic music." Electronica is music that is danceable by the general public, that is, by everyone, but electronic music for the most part needs professional dancers to interpret the beats.
What I liked about Candle Nine's pieces is that they skirt a very 21st-century line between noise and music; they allow the digital artifacts (the clicking and skips which happen when you process digital music live) to become part of the composition. For example, in "Internally Threaded" digital artifacts and noise that initially seem to be a mistake develop into the main rhythm track. In other tracks, noises morph into repeated melodic themes. Never repeating too much to be too dull, they continually mutate and change until the end. Several times a sudden shift, for instance, a cut in volume, seem to be a mistake but then when repeated expose the composer's intentions.
Many tracks are dreamy, atmospheric and nostalgic of 90's electronica. Spatial and wandering, they allow a bit of textural dissonance so that it never becomes too sleepy. Candle Nine has found his favorite timbres (soothing strings and steady drum machine, illegible female voice), but I soon myself wishing for more varied sound patches and more complex harmonic patterns. I got it in Track #8, "Kerrianne's Spine" with the introduction of an acoustic piano patch. This is my favorite piece on the album; the simple melodies are introduced, build in the middle section with interesting chords and lines of dissonance, and finally come to a rest in the third section. A simple A-B-A structure—but it works and holds together well, both conceptually and structurally.
This got me to thinking that perhaps Candle Nine would do well to collaborate with live musicians. There are a lot of good musical ideas on the album, and there is nothing like mixing digital electronics with live acoustic musicians to make the music really pop out.
The Muse in the Machine is available from Tympanik Audio http://tympanikaudio.com/releases/ta037/ .
© Elise Kermani, 2010
In May film director and sound composer Elise Kermani will be at the Dublin Music Festival as the sound designer for the Vicky Shick Dance Company. Kermani's independent film Poe and the Museum of Lost Arts is slated for filming at the 3LD Art and Technology Center in New York City this summer.