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Richard Barrett - Dark Matter

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Label: NMC Recordings

Cat No: NMCD183

Barcode: 5023363018326

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 26th November 2012

Works

Barrett, Richard

Dark Matter

Artists

Cikada Ensemble
Elision

Conductor

Christian Eggen

Works

Barrett, Richard

Dark Matter

Artists

Cikada Ensemble
Elision

Conductor

Christian Eggen

About

Richard Barrett’s work encompasses both composition and improvisation, ranging from chamber music to innovative uses of live electronics and collaborations with visual artists. Much of his work arises from close long-term collaborations, such as the electronic duo Furt which he formed with Paul Obermayer in 1986 (and its more recent octet version Forch) and his association, since 1990, with Elision.

Dark Matter, scored for an ensemble of 19 performers (including soprano, electric guitar and a vast array of percussion) plus live and pre-recorded electronics, sets secret Egyptian texts carved on the walls of sarcophagi in the pyramids of 2400BC - possibly the oldest known religious texts in the world - alongside fragments from Lucretius and other Greek writers on the nature of matter, the stars and other worlds and ending with Samuel Beckett's 'Sounds'.

For the first performance of the work, Barrett collaborated with Norwegian artist Per Inge Bjørlo - the site was transformed into multiple architectural/acoustical spaces and viewers/listeners were invited to form their own imaginary narrative and to create a pathway through a labyrinth of installations and sound-sources.

Sound/Video

Paused

1

The Empire of Lights
2

transmission I
3

khasma
4

transmission II
5

De vita coelitus comparanda
6

transmission III
7

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae
8

transmission V
9

Katasterismoi
10

Sounds
11

transmission VI

Europadisc Review

Congratulations are due to the NMC label for issuing this wonderfully challenging disc of a recording made at the Kunsthøgskole in Oslo in August 2005. Richard Barrett is not among the most familiar of modern British composers to UK audiences, for he has spent most of his career working on the continent, notably in the Netherlands and Berlin. For a while he was associated with the 'New Complexity' movement, led by another British ex-pat, Brian Ferneyhough, and his music, which makes extensive use of electronics together with improvisational techniques, remains unashamedly complex and challenging, stretching music's potential to express and confront much wider issues.

Such is certainly the case with Dark Matter, a cycle of independent but connected movements linked by a broadly cosmological theme, and drawing on texts ranging from ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology and philosophy, via the Renaissance and Enlightenment, to Samuel Beckett's prose piece Sounds. In his detailed notes (supplemented by further on-line information and texts on NMC's website here), Barrett describes Dark Matter as an attempt to explore 'the unknown, and possibly unknowable [...] and perhaps even further to [...] the emergence of a structure in the universe.'

This is a hugely ambitious aim, and Barrett harnesses a vast range of extreme vocal, instrumental and electronic techniques, in music of constantly shifting relationships and perspectives. Interlaced between the main movements is a series of 'transmissions' whose constant element is electric guitar, and which often have the function of transitions but also have an exploratory life of their own. These transmissions also meld together the disparate, multi-sectional main movements into a convincing, and indeed imposing, overall structure.

In performance, Dark Matter is presented as an installation, taking place in specially-built steel and glass constructions by Norwegian artist Per Inge Bjørlo. It is thus as much about spatial and visual experience as it is about the sonic. Almost inevitably, any audio recording can only offer a partial reflection of the live experience. Yet in this performance a sense of space is also generated by the music itself: try the startling transition from the explosively electronic transmission II to the almost desolate opening of the third main section, De vita coelitus comparanda ('on capturing the life of stars'), whose scoring is a reflection on Botticelli's Primavera.

Richard Barrett devised this music expressly for the musicians of the Australian ELISION and Norwegian CIKADA ensembles. Under the Norwegian conductor Christian Eggen, and with the composer himself generating the live electronics, they give an authoritative, virtuosic and thoroughly committed performance. It seems almost invidious to mention particular performers in such an accomplished joint venture, but soprano Deborah Kayser and Daryl Buckley on electric guitar are both quite remarkable. Although the work is slightly abridged in order to fit on a single CD, this is certainly one of the most adventurous and compelling discs of new music in recent years. Come to it with open ears and an open mind, and you are sure to be rewarded.