Listening to ‘Touch Five’ is rather like holding your breath under water. How long can you keep it up? Yes, this double CD, which contains five tracks and has a running time in excess of 2 hours, is more of an endurance test than a listening pleasure. Disc one contains two half-hour tracks that consist of a single sustained note, the small wavers in tone the only variation that takes place over their duration.
A different sustained hum played on different instruments, is elongated over the course of three 23-minute tracks on Disc 2. Do the notes change, or is it simply the wavering within the notes, the minuscule undulations? Such microtonal explorations invite philosophical musings, or otherwise threaten to drive the listener insane.
4/10
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