Frank Zappa once said that a musically-minded person could walk into a factory and hear rhythm everywhere. What some people consider noise, others consider music (and the opposite is often true as well!). One man’s air conditioner drone is another’s trance-inducing harmony. I can attest to this, as I spent some time in high school recording train whistles and various automobile horns with the intent of analyzing their intervals.
Incidentally, the horn of a 1982 Subaru is a minor third-D and F.
Both of these composers strike me as like-minded folks, the kind of people who are as fascinated by mundane sound as I am.
Playthroughs is a startling record. It consists of drones and sustained tone clusters, and that’s about it. What makes the record so incredible is just how much Whitman can do with so little. The record opens with “Track3a,” which comprises two sine waves spaced a major second apart. Continued...