Apart from being equally famous and notorious as the man who performed and recorded silence and called it music, above his compositions, John’s Cage’s musical legacy appears to have become centred around his creation of the ‘prepared piano’.
Francisco Lopez is the latest of a growing number of successors to have prepared their own pianos in order to create random and quite different effects. ‘Movement 1’ on Untitled #275 explores the potential of his customised instrument. The results are certainly interesting, the stunted sounds more akin to digital blips than anything analogue, and little could be further from the conventional sound of hammer on string. A relentless rhythm hold the piece together, before stabs of noise reminiscent of the old ‘orchestral strike’ sound you might find on a Casio keyboard from the 80s bring a different kind of tension.
It’s a taut, jittery composition, that builds as new layers are added. Yet Lopez is also more than conversant in the impact of silence and the importance of dynamic range, with lengthy stretches occupied by nothing but the occasional low rumble of sustain before more metronomic clacking commences and heralds the next wave of unpredictable notation.
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‘Movement 2’ takes the whole process a stage further, being ‘created by evolutionary studio transformation of Movement 1’. Precisely what does this mean, and what does such an evolutionary transformation entail? I’m not entirely sure, but the outcome is a piece that features mechanised whirrings and arrhythmic percussive sounds which rise to inexorable crescendos before ceasing abruptly. There’s an aggressive, industrial feel to parts of this half of the album not present in the first, and dark atmospherics permeate the spaces where near-silence hangs on its counterpart.
Very much an album of two halves and a recording that’s all about contrast, ‘Untitled #275’ contains some moments that are intriguing and sonically interesting – although I’m not sure I could sit through the other 274….
Francisco Lopez Online
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