The Lord is in this place…How dreadful is this place?

Fur­saxa — First Uni­tar­i­an Chapel, 4/17/2006

I’ll reserve com­ment­ing too much on this per­for­mance since said com­men­tary is already spo­ken for, but Fur­saxa proved as mes­mer­iz­ing as I’d heard. Her per­for­mance com­pris­es lay­ered iter­a­tions of loops and delay. As the notes decay and are renewed, the sound is one of addi­tion and sub­trac­tion — with each vari­a­tion there’s a game of attri­tion to be played, viz. which sounds remain and which are removed. It’s a dex­trous exer­cise in drone, the sort of thing that makes music like this inter­est­ing to me.

Last Mon­day’s con­cert remind­ed me why omi­nous, fore­bod­ing freeform music is so excit­ing. Even with rehearsal, these per­for­mances always have an ele­ment of impro­vi­sa­tion as a byprod­uct of tech­nique and mood. To me it’s much less pre­de­ter­mined than more con­ven­tion­al folk rock modes, and Fur­saxa sounds like an anthol­o­gy of tone poems read simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. As drone gains greater accep­tance as a seri­ous artis­tic expres­sion, it’s inter­est­ing to see how so much mean­ing gets cre­at­ed through fre­quen­cy and ampli­tude by inter­twin­ing hope, ter­ror and chance.