THE BOSTON GLOBE: With concerts canceled, new albums offer a bridge to the artists we love
THE BOSTON GLOBE: With concerts canceled, new albums offer a bridge to the artists we love
BY DAVID WEININGER
”The omnivorous vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth usually takes up residence at Mass MoCA each summer. To compensate for its absence this year, here are two EPs containing works that could hardly sound more different. Gunn’s ‘The Ascendant’ is a song cycle on poems by Maria Zajkowski, in which close harmonies are anchored by driving rhythmic grooves. The hypnotic, interlacing patterns get some subtle reinforcement from Jason Treuting’s drumming. At the other end of the aesthetic spectrum is Michael Harrison’s ‘Just Constellations,’ a softly incandescent exercise in just (or pure) tuning, in which intervals follow the harmonic series and have a different resonance than the more familiar equal temperament. The music is largely made up of ecstatically slow, miasmatic chords, suspended in space like a suggestive but unfamiliar cloud pattern. Adding to the unearthly feel of the music is the resonance of the TANK Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, Colo., a 65-foot-tall former water tower where ‘Just Constellations’ was recorded.”