PROBES #31.2
Auxiliaries
The PROBES AUXILIARIES dig deeper into the main programme topic but are also programmed for your ecstatic listening pleasure; so examples here are edited and sequenced and cut together on the wheels of steal; there’s no talking either (at least not by me), so you need to download the playlist to get the details, backstory and relevance of each of the pieces featured. In this installment we look at the diversity of instruments extended out from the xylophone and their sometimes surprising use in almost every imaginable musical context.
Auxiliaries
Amongst the new acoustic inventions, Chris Cutler highlights here the Rumitone, the Uberorgan, a whole Anarchestra, Philip Dadson's Sproings, a Violimba, some scraper flutes, an Aquavine, Diego Stocco's Custom-built Orchestra, an elastic aerophone-centriphone, Leonardo da Vinci's viola organista, Martin Molin's heroic Marble Machine and many other hopeful and inspired monsters.
Auxiliaries
In this new Auxiliary by Chris Cutler, we’ll find the Theremin at work in art ensembles, symphony orchestras, a jazz group, rock bands and on film and television scores – both alone and in quantity –, and there’s a rare sighting of Nikolai Obukhov’s Croix Sonore from his extraordinary Third and Last Testament.
In PROBES #32 Chris Culter traces the history of some newly invented instruments (in the 20th century), including the Chromelodion, the Boo, the Mazdaphone, the Quadrangulis Reversum, the Crystal Baschets, Harry Bertoia’s Sonambiente, the unearthly Daxophone and Arthur Harris’ Mother Lap Cello Harp, Whispering Harp and the14.5 metre viol, whose lowest strings are inaudible to the human ear.
Auxiliaries
Chris Cutler takes us on a stroll through music made (variously) with water, stones, stage props, ice, snow, stalactites, Tesla coils, sand dunes, leaves, flowers, grass, twigs, glass and a coffee can.
In PROBES #31 we begin to consider evolutionary pressures and invented instruments and follow the twists and turns that led the xylophone out of Asia and Africa, spun it around the world and metamorphosed it into the vibraphone; with a coda from the intonarumori.