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Title of audio medium	Strange and Sacred Noise
Article no.	6025997
Subcategory	Steel bands/percussion bands
Performer	Percussion Group Cincinnati
Composer	Adams, John Luther
Label *	click here
Label's article no. *	click here
Brief description	2005 Best Experimental Music - OtherMusic.com Also available on DVD. "...The music seemed to enact vast and complex natural processes, as if I were witnessing, in sonic form, the solar system forming or the continents shifting. It had an incredible visceral impact..." – Jonathan Russell, San Francisco Classical Voice "...you really can't help but fall into its entrancing rhythms... carrying the ear through sonic white water as swiftly as it floats over a subsequent movements scored for four air-raid sirens... Adams uses these timbres to speak with a degree of nuance and subtlety that pushes buttons noise acts never quite reach." – Molly Sheridan NewMusicBox "In some ways, this music exists beyond judgment, which I think is very much Adams's intention. One simply has to accept the different sounds as they appear and disappear. They are evocative and mysterious, but also plainspoken; there's no mystical obfuscation here. And there are many memorable passages: the waves of rising and falling inharmonic partials (or noise-bands) from the four tam-tams; the web of intersecting accelerandos and ritards in the 10-drum "velocities crossing in phase-space"; the delicate rumble of four marimbas in "clusters on a quadrilateral grid 1" and "clusters on a quadrilateral grid 4," punctuated by inscrutable silences; the jangly dance of crotales and glockenspiel in "clusters on a quadrilateral grid... " – Robert Carl, Fanfare " All of the music is pared down to the essentials, and nothing in Adams' 73-minute composition is extraneous. Different movements are characterized by the combination of instruments involved - snares, tam tams, tom-toms and bass drums, mallet percussion, and bells. ... Strange and Sacred Noise returns us to the very flashpoint of American percussion music for a fresh perspective... " – David Lewis, All Music Guide "...a powerful and important work, an immersion into an overwhelming world of sound, a participation through performance in the sounds of violence in nature." – CDeMUSIC
Year of publication	1997
Total duration	ca. 1:13:05
Available	yes

No.	Track title	Duration	Music	Sound sample
1	dust into dust...	9:15
2	solitary and time-breaking waves, After James Tenney	10:44
3	velocities crossing in phase-space, After Conlon Nancarrow and Peter Garland	9:40
4	triadic iteration lattices, To Edgar Varése and Alvin Lucier	8:22
5	clusters on a quadrilateral grid 1, To Morton Feldman	8:39
6	clusters on a quadrilateral grid 2	4:36
7	clusters on a quadrilateral grid 3	4:31
8	clusters on a quadrilateral grid 4	8:35
9	and dust rising...	8:43

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