For 4 musicians, soundfile playback and live electronics.
14 minutes
Performed by the neither/nor pick-up band: keyboards: Marc Couroux, John Mark Sherlock; electric guitar: eldritch Priest; clarinets: Heather Roche.
Recorded live at Somewhere There, Toronto, August 16, 2008.
A study premised around the expansion of a well-known song (MacArthur Park, by Jimmy Webb; specifically the orchestral Richard Harris version) from a vertical entity (comprised of multiple parts, voices, harmonizations) into a horizontal one, allowing the components of the original fold into and interpenetrate each other, floating around unhierarchically, unmoored from their original function(s) / position(s). It’s also a trope around foreground/background de/re-mobilizations: the surface membrane, a productive froth of concatenated melodicities at times exposing through gaps in the congealing texture the distant, distorted rumble of the original song, plodding at sub-standard speeds, a sedimentation of itself. A kind of alternative “cover version”, the original song being located somewhere in the tension between membrane and sediment. The “Martin Arnold” in question is an esteemed experimental Toronto composer, whose adumbrate (bolt) constitutes a significant precursor.