catalog number: either/5
artist: KRAIG GRADY
title: Our Rainy Season / Nuilagi
format: CD
status: sold out
Kraig Grady: composer, metallophone
Jim Denley: bass flute, alto saxophone and wooden flute
Mike Majkowski: upright bass
Erin Barnes: metallophone
Jonathan Marmor: metallophone
1. Our Rainy Season (49:12)
2. Nuilagi (25:54)
"The two pieces on this album reflect the sounds and the duality
of the experiences of our rainy seasons. The first is an internal
reflection sifted through memories. The second is a realization of
the very music played by the people of Anaphoria to give thanks
to the rain.
Our Rainy Season features only two but highly skilled improvisers:
Jim Denley and Mike Majkowski. The artists were asked to
improvise on single notes with extreme pitch accuracy to within
one tenth of a cent, which they could evaluate with the aid of a
visual display while performing. While the tuning for Our Rainy
Season is from Anaphoria, it resembles a scale once found among
the Chopi people in the village of Mavila in Mozambique, an area
that likewise experiences its own severe rainy season. In the
process of composing another work, Beyond The Windows, it
became more and more noticeable how various nuances of the
performers’ gestures contributed to the feel and personality of
the piece. It was in Our Rainy Season that these possibilities could
be fully explored.
Nuilagi reflects the newer style of music-making found during the
wet months of Anaphoria. We hear the sounds of rain embraced
by the trio of metallophones playing in their Meta-Slendro scale.
The piece celebrates the coming of the rainy season after the
relentless dry season that precedes it. Anaphorian performers
(pseudonyms used to confuse evil spirits): Erin Barnes, Jonathan
Marmor, Kraig Grady." (Kraig Grady)
Kraig Grady is a composer/decomposer/sound explorer. Since
1975 he has pursued the formation of ensembles of acoustic
microtonal instruments of his own design/modification to explore
an interaction with environmental spaces, the contextual
influence of visionary space, and psychoacoustical pitch
phenomena. Seeing personal fulfillment as not possible within the
confines of specialization, he has also engaged extensively as a
shadow puppeteer, tuning theorist, filmmaker, world music radio
DJ and concert promoter. His compositions often include
interactions with his own silent films and shadow plays.
The 90’s saw Grady’s first work connected to the activities of The
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island and more recently
The Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria. Both organizations serve
to promote the visionary geographical culture of this island.
Despite the fact that the nature and size of his instruments make
touring difficult and rare, his work has been presented at Ballhaus
Naunyn Berlin (Germany), the Chateau de la Napoule (France),
the Norton Simon Museum of Art (Los Angeles), the Institute of
Modern Art (Brisbane), and the Pacific Asia Museum. Generally it
has been within reach of his locales where he engages in most of
his activities.
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METAL JAZZ (MAY 2011)
An Anaphorian outrigger glided up to my house the other day
during a heavy rain, and an oarsman in a puka necklace tossed
me this CD attached to a coconut. I threw him a hand mirror and
a bag of mini-Snickers, and the crew paddled off. White men
always get the better of such exchanges. Kraig Grady, a
microtonal composer who explores the exotic leafy regions
between our ears, left Los Angeles for Australia three years ago,
so if a recording is the only way I can currently engage with his
music, I'll hoard it with greed. As always, it turned out to be a
wonderful trip.
"Our Rainy Season" involves the interaction of heat rising from
the ground and water falling from the sky. For 45 minutes, it
drones and drips, creating a local climate in which you can
breathe. This multi-tracked "improvisation" between Jim Denley
(bass flute, alto sax, wooden flute) and Mike Majkowski (upright
bass) is improvised in that the players weren't told when to play,
just what notes to play, and Grady cut up and arranged the notes
later. In Grady's world, the blend of different frequencies within
his scales means a lot -- when the notes rub against one
another, they also rub against our ears, removing us to a place
outside standard Western harmony and urbanized experience. In
a jungle, the sound of a fly's wings must harmonize with the
sound of the wind, for instance; it can't be any other way. When
we talk about dissonance, we usually mean sounds that remind
us of machines -- car brakes, blenders, rivet guns. Those
combined noises can tweak our nerves in exciting ways, but
they're not natural. Being a man of peace, Grady tunes in to
nature, and here he has walked away from his self-built
metallophones and organs to employ instruments and musicians
in fresh-air ways. To get the players focused on exactly the right
pitches, he set them up with visual aids, like a guitar tuner. The
process guided them into simplicity and concentration; the music
became a meditation. You will fall into it.
The second piece, the 26-minute "Nuilagi," took me back to
Grady's microtonal xylophone music. It was recorded live a few
years ago at "Thesm Ell" (L.A.'s bare-bones downtown club The
Smell), so the creaking footsteps here might even have been
mine. The gamelan-like clonks, plengggs and hollowing echoes,
overlapping and joining, emanated a gentle physicality and a
more than stereophonic sense of motion. I pictured the quizzical
calm of tall, bushy-browed Grady, along with Erin Barnes and
Jonathan Marmor, as they wristed their mallets and drifted
between instruments across the cement floor. Old acid molecules
dislodged from my salivary glands; I felt blobs of rain chilling into
icicles as throbbing alien voices called me home. I looked at label
head Dale Lloyd's textured downpour artwork and felt quiet.
Is there such a thing as being lulled awake? Yeah, there is.
TEXTURA (APRIL 2011)
On paper, Kraig Grady's latest recording, which includes two
pieces, the fifty-minute “Our Rainy Season” featuring Jim Denley
(bass flute, alto saxophone, wooden flute) and Mike Majkowski
(upright bass) and the twenty-six-minute “Nuilagi” performed by
metallophone players Grady, Erin Barnes, and Jonathan Marmor,
certainly appears interesting enough. But when heard the
recording turns out to be even more captivating than such details
might suggest. For more than three decades, Grady has been
involved in the formation of ensembles that use acoustic
microtonal instruments (of his own design or modification) to
explore interactions with particular environments and psycho-
acoustical pitch phenomena. For this project, Grady treats the
opening piece as “an internal reflection sifted through memories”
and the second as a presentation of music played by the people
of Anaphoria to give thanks for the rain.
It's the microtonal and pitch-related aspects of his work that
emerges as a focal point in the longer piece, which proves to be a
fascinating listening experience and holds one's attention despite
its length. Denley and Majkowski were asked to improvise on
single notes with extreme pitch accuracy (the tuning is apparently
from Anaphoria and resembles a scale derived from the village of
Mavila in Mozambique). The blended tones of the flutes are a
dominant and persistent presence, but occasionally they drop
away to allow the fluttering bass tones to move out of the
shadows and into the spotlight. Just after the twenty-minute
mark, Denley steps aside, and Majkowski's notes flutter like
raindrops or hail bouncing off of a windowsill until the flute tones
re-emerge, this time accompanied by Majkowski's bowing. The
two generate no small degree of thunder and rumble during the
performance and more often than not suggest a blustery wind
octet more than duo. Even so, it's the experience of attending to
the ever-so-slight gradations in tonality that, sounding on
occasion like car horns blaring in a mid-town traffic jam in
Manhattan, make the piece especially engrossing. The bright
timbre of the metallophones immediately sets “Nuilagi” apart from
the first piece, with the second conceived as a celebration of the
rainy season's advance after the dry season preceding it. Though
it's difficult not to be reminded of Reich when the metallophones
play pulsating patterns, “Nuilagi,” a live recording, nevertheless
turns out to be as mesmerizing as “Our Rainy Season,” if in
slightly different manner; it certainly requires little effort on the
listener's part to hear the shimmering tones as suggestive of
pitter-pattering rain sounds. Grady here opts for somewhat of a
peaceful mood that only makes the piece more appealing.
THE WATCHFUL EAR (APRIL 2011)
As I have written once or twice lately, I have taken to listening to
CDs recently without (at first) paying any attention at all to liner
notes or press releases. Tonight’s CD is one that, after an initial
‘blind’ play-through I thought I had the album figured out, but
then once I had read the liners I suddenly felt quite confused…
The CD is a new release on the either/OAR offshoot of the
and/OAR label by an American composer named Kraig Grady. The
disc consists of two compositions, one named Our Rainy Season,
and the other Nuilagi. I wasn’t previously aware of Grady, and a
bit of Googling around suggests he is linked in some way to Harry
Partch’s work, which makes sense having listened to the album.
So before reading the liner notes, I had this album down as
entirely composed, with a focus on tuning systems in that way
that only American academic composers seem to be able to do. I
thought of Arnold Dreyblatt for the first of the two pieces (Our
Rainy Season) and yes Partch for the second, Nuilagi which has a
strong gamelanesque feel. The first piece has a feeling of tuned
drone as it works with single notes played in different ways over
longish periods of time, the second has a more scattered, fluid
feel, with a strong sense of rainfall, which I picked up on the first
time around, though maybe the title of the first composition here
may have pushed me in that direction.
On reading the liners I discovered a strange story about “the
people of Anaphoria” and the first composition here is apparently
an “internal reflection based on memories”. It uses, according to
the notes “tuning from Anaphoria” though this also “resembles a
scale once found amongst the Chopi people in the village of
Mavila in Mozambique”. Hmm. Have you ever heard of Anaphoria?
Me neither, and a bit of Googling only really brings up references
to other works by Grady. The second composition, Nuilagi, is
apparently “a realisation of the very music played by the people
of Anaphoria to give thanks to the rain”. You know, I’m not going
to worry about whether the place exists or if it is some bizarre
construct created by the composer for whatever reason. I think I’ll
just focus on the music.
So Our Rainy Season I rather like. It goes on quite a lot longer
than I might have ideally liked at around fifty minutes, but it
features a slowly shifting, quite dense stream of acoustic
instrumental sounds that at any one time focus on single notes,
which might change as the piece progresses, but primarily creates
a constant stream of sound made up of many earthy, breathy
details. Once I had read the info on the track I was very surprised
to learn their were only two musicians involved Jim Denley (bass
flute, alto sax and wooden flute) and Mike Majkowski (upright
bass) and that while they stuck closely to a series of notes
chosen by Grady for the composition, they improvised sounds
within these notes. So we hear all kinds of instrumental
techniques producing a wide range of textures, but always at the
same pitch. This reminds me of the methods used by Bertrand
Denzler on his recent solo saxophone disc. The musicianship,
given this new understanding of the score is actually very
impressive, as the duo manage to create a sound that appears
much bigger and rich than you imagine they could create.
Nuilagi is a quite different affair, a trio composition for three
metallophones, traditional gamelan instruments performed by Erin
Barnes, Jonathan Marmor and Grady himself. The piece seems to
be an aural picture of rainfall, mimicking the sounds of scattered
rain, falling hard and fast in places, and much softer, almost
silently elsewhere. The sound of these instruments massed
together, streams of ringing metal bars, is quite beautiful, but I
suspect they would sound gorgeous no matter what you
attempted to play on them. Nuilagi, lasting some twenty-five
minutes actually begins to test my patience a little. The sounds
are lovely, the impersonations of rainfall well done, but once you’
ve heard it, got the idea into your head of what the music is
trying to achieve, it does little else but carry on in the same vein
and at the end of the second play-through I felt somewhat
exhausted by the music and maybe a little short-changed.
So a curious disc then. Ignoring all of the odd stuff (the three
performers of Nuilagi are listed, but their names are also
described as pseudonyms used to confuse evil spirits!) there is
some carefully considered and thought-through music here,
particularly in the first of the two compositions. Its a disc that will
probably greatly interest those that find studies of intonation and
tuning interesting, and while I personally don’t, it clearly is a work
of some accomplishment in that area.
FOUTER & SWICK (MARCH 2011)
Grady’s new album, released on Dale Lloyd’s either/oar label,
consists of two pieces, Our Rainy Season [49:12] and Nuilagi
[25:54].
Before we go into the music itself we should begin by taking a
good look at the background to this music. If you don’t do this,
you’ll come to conclusions such as the one I read recently which
described this work as ‘modern classical music with a strong
exotic touch’. I can understand why someone would say this –
the music is pitch based and the instruments are conventional
‘orchestral instruments’. But the truth of the matter is that the
tonal system has as much to do with classical music as
intelligence has with military intelligence and the instruments are,
well, simply instruments, tools for realising a musical idea. You
could, if you wanted to take an non-ethnocentric view, balance
the equation by saying that the music is exotic with a classical
touch. I’ve no doubt that it will in time be described as ambient,
dronal and (of course) minimalist, for good measure.
None of these descriptions or categories are sufficient. For a start
Grady has been investigating justly intoned instrumental music for
over three decades. He is held in high esteem within several
overlapping musical communities, not least because of his role in
carrying forward the project initiated by Harry Partch. Unlike
Partch, though, Grady makes music that allows the tuning
systems to develop their inner logic, the harmonies to breathe,
without regressing into mere demonstrations. Though I would
take nothing away from Partch’s project and pioneering work, I
always felt that his music was too fast for my ears to appreciate
the possibilities that the elaborate tuning system was set up to
exploit. Grady is also one of the few people I know who can hold
his own within the scholastic, pedantic, inquisitional arcane
mathematical environment that weighs down upon most of the
specialist discussion forums on tuning. I’ve pitched in to these
forums from time to time and have been promptly slaughtered. In
fact he sheds light where others obfuscate, simply because he
puts theory into practice. He now takes time to discuss within the
safe haven of a non-confrontational forum on Justly Intoned
music. More recently Grady’s work is being associated with the
wider field of sound art, which I welcome greatly as it brings his
music to new appreciative audiences and lays down some serious
benchmarks.
Kraig Grady is part and parcel of the island of Anaphoria, which
lends to him something of the ethnographer and something of the
surrealist, a fine combination indeed, though I’m never sure in
what order. Anyone can contribute and become a friend. I’m
holding out for a position as Honorary Consulate. I’ll leave you to
sort out Anaphoria for yourself, pausing only to draw your
attention to The Anaphorian papers authored by theorist Erv
Wilson and archived by Grady, which will keep you informed on all
aspects of Just Intonation, but will take you years to interpret
and put to use. Erv Wilson still awaits a full appreciation by the
wider musical community. Having assimilated the theory, designed
(or chosen) and auditioned the scales you prefer, you then have
to make your own instruments, maintain and store them, coerce
other players into playing and recording your compositions, find
venues and promote concerts, all largely without institutional
support. It’s like running an entire orchestra on your own.
So, even before listening, I’m persuaded to hold Grady’s work in
the highest esteem. The title of the work, Our Rainy Season, is
typical of Grady’s universe, where biophonic and geophonic sound
worlds tend to coalesce and combine. Hence Grady’s work
throughout his career in accompanying shadow theatre, where
the evocation of various natural phenomena in mythical narratives
is so important. From personal correspondence I’ve learned that
Grady ‘did not shy away from the noise elements produced by the
instruments. There are places of high hiss, almost like what one
hears in a thick but gentle rain’, further evidence, possibly, of
Grady’s recontextualisation of his own work within the wider field
of sound art, steering sensibly away from the sterile scholastics.
Our Rainy Season makes us of a scale called Meta-Mavila. Nuilagi
uses the Meta-Slendro, a scale used by Grady throughout much of
his previous work. These scales are highly elaborate abstractions
drawn from existing scales and scale systems: Mavila from
Mozambique, slendros from Indonesia. The older indigenous
scales are primarily melodic, with uneven intervals between the
tones. These lend themselves to compositional techniques such
as heterophony, for example, in the marimba ensembles of
Mozambique and in the gamelans of Indonesia. The modern
abstractions, whilst taking their ‘inspiration’ from the older forms,
are designed to offer the composer a wide range of harmonic
options. Because of the arithmetic involved, combinations of tones
sounded together will ‘contain’ the fundamentals and harmonics
of other tones in the system. Composition with these scales
draws the composer into number systems, geometric
representations of harmonic matrices and conceptual approaches
to developing scores.
We can look at the origins of this scale with the Chopi people of
Mozambique (scroll down to Sunday, January 17, 2010). To
appreciate the kind of transformation that takes place when Erv
Wilson turns his hand to an ‘original’ African scale, have a look at
this. See what I mean by complexity and a scientific approach?
Part of the reason this looks so complicated is that you have the
use of numbers to refer to several different categories: pitches,
frequencies, cents, ratios, tone position in recurrent sequences.
For those familiar with the system, Grady has chosen a specific
range as his preferred area (see page 5) for the Meta-Mavila as
played in Our Rainy Season: the nine tones from 37 to 415.
Grady differs from the majority of Just Intonation composers in
that he not only approaches the wonderful world of tuning like a
dedicated research scientist, hence the several decades invested
in his work, but actually applies what he has learned to real music
played on physical instruments. But why break with 12 tone equal
temperament? That argument is for others to develop elsewhere
but there are convincing answers on Grady’s own blog if you care
to spend some time there. The problem is that in order to be able
to listen to new systems we need first to develop those systems
and then to build new instruments or modify existing ones. That
seems to have been a bridge too far for the Academy in general.
Digital technology can help the curious, but if justly intoned music
is to make an impression on the world of 12 equal there can be
no substitute for physical instruments.
The idea behind Our Rainy Season, as outlined in the sleeve
notes, is that the players use a Peterson strobe tuner to monitor
their tuning accuracy whilst improvising on the tones of the scale.
Over the duration of a piece, with two players, various
combination and difference tones will arise, suggesting new
directions, and the ears of the improvisers will decide where we
go from there. I can see why a Peterson would work: the strobe’s
(or virtual strobe) visual display is very friendly and coaxes you
along to the true pitch rather than just telling you when you’ve
reached it, thereby offering an elegant solution to the problem of
how wind players in particular can hold pitch in works which make
use of just intonation tuning systems. You can have a virtual
fouter around for yourself here. From the very start of the piece,
upper partials seem to be strongly emphasised; then the players
explore the timbres and various articulations of their chosen
instruments. The music is quite unlike anything else I’ve heard,
utterly compelling and totally original.
Grady has previously explored the Meta-Mavila on his own hand
made instruments. In choosing here to work with conventional
instruments, solving the problem of tuning by a conceptual
approach to appropriate technology, he avoids two of the
problems that have given Just Intonation and microtonal music in
general a bad press in some quarters (‘it sounds out of tune’).
First, in relying on good musicians to use their ears to let the
piece develop/grow/evolve organically, he avoids some of those
truly dreadful efforts where bits of plumbing are welded on to
clarinets, or where fast gestures are thrown together on to a
meticulously notated score and interpreted by a virtuosic player,
with no-one, including the player, really able to tell how close to
the score we are at any given point. Secondly, he steers away
from electronic methods of rendering the tones, not that I’d
expect him to make use of midi synths and retuning software, but
there are plenty out there who do – and unless you use your
ears well it all still sounds like an effing stylophone!
So, on one level we have an excellent inventive twist on the use
of the Meta-Mavila. In the simplicity of his concept he surpasses
my own efforts to find practical playing solutions. In investigating
ways to have conventional instruments play music composed
using the Eikosany, a just intonation twenty tone scale system, I
arrived at the ‘solution’ of a string quintets (actually two) with
each instrument tuned to a specific scordatura, not too far from
standard tuning. But how many string quintets are there out
there willing to try new work in a strange tuning? The obvious
answer led me to that task of constructing my own quartet of five
string bowed zithers in order to realise the music. If you’ve
developed a taste for tuning detail, have a look at the Meta-
Slendro, the scale used in Nuilagi and the tuning of Grady’s
largest ensemble of instruments.
If there’s anything ‘classical’ about Nuilagi I can’t find it, but the
simplicity of the counterpoint, the gentle polyphony, the passing
dissonances, certainly remind me of early medieval works for
three voices, that key period in the Western musical tradition
where plainchant had recently developed into polyphony. What
we’re hearing here goes far beyond beautiful sounds on a
metallophone The beauty here doesn’t arise from the fact of the
metallophone, but is a result of the depth and range of sheer
hard work that has gone into the overall production: precisely
because of the design of the instruments, the tuning, the
conceptual rigour and the fact that they work together. Thus Just
Intonation in the 21st century.
Having built and played my own instruments, using just intonation
scale systems designed by Erv Wilson and others, I’ve noticed
that I never tire of playing and listening to these tunings in the
same way that I do playing in equal temperament. I’ve also
noticed how energising choral singing can be, for others as well
as myself, in particular with simple contrapuntal music, which
tends to move in an adaptive just intonation, from one justly
intoned block to the next. I believe there’s something at work
here, but I don’t quite know what it is in scientific or musical
terms. It’s all very subjective. What I do know though is that
some of the more tight-arsed tuning theorists among us will spit
blood at the mere suggestion of transcendental qualities in tuning
systems. Which of course gives me all the more reason to
promote such suggestions.
The emotional impact, therefore is unique – on the one hand
there’s the way in which you are drawn in, seduced at times –
you want to be a closer part of it – yet there’s always an ‘edge’ in
the dissonance, the subliminal awareness of uneven scale steps
perhaps, that keeps the mind and body alert. Simple and complex
at the same time, like nature. All in all, this music takes me to a
better place.
Several years ago I was waiting to perform a piece at an
electroacoustic concert series. Outside the venue I found myself
holding forth about my microtonal interests, my instruments and
about how the idiom, if there is such a thing, had informed my
electrocoustic efforts. One fellow looked at me oddly and declared
‘But microtonality is dead’, which put a swift end to the
conversation. To be fair, as a typical product of a Western musical
education with little understanding of non-European music I think
he was referring to that dreadful ‘square peg in a round hole’
concert music that really does sound out of tune, which was
barely tolerated by the establishment, and which was tossed out
as soon as the novelty diminished. But nonetheless, if he is out
there reading this, I invite him to listen to the music of Kraig
Grady, and thereby to evolve and grow.
(James Wyness)
VITAL WEEKLY (MARCH 2011)
Back in Vital Weekly 582 I first encountered the music of Kraig
Grady. It was an amazing CD, compared with the best of Alvin
Lucier, Phill Niblock, Ingram Marshall. Since then there have been
more releases, in which Grady explores his own tuning system. I
do believe he is a writer of scores which are performed by other
musicians, but then maybe I am wrong. Two lengthy pieces here
on ‘Our Rainy Season/Nuilagi’. The first is performed by Jim Denley
(bass flute, alto sax and wooden flute) and Mike Majkowski
(upright bass), while the second deals with metallophones played
by Erin Barnes, Jonathan Marmor and Graidy himself. As said its
not easy to figure how Grady works. In ‘Our Rainy Season’,
Denley and Majkowski were asked to improvise on single notes
with extreme pitch accuracy. I assume Grady then took these
recordings to the computer and collate a piece of music out of it
(or perhaps I am entirely wrong, and this is them playing together
without much editing – the cover is not entirely clear about this).
Its an almost fifty minutes piece of music which has all the great
things that I like in music: long sustaining, acoustic sounds, which
at times sound like sine waves, and making beautiful tonal drifts.
‘Nuilagi’ is about half that length (and perhaps you could wonder
if that first piece isn’t enough for one CD) and ‘celebrates the
coming of the rainy season after the relentless dry season that
precedes it’ and has a likewise beautiful touch to it. It reminded
me of Indonesian music (Grady already produced a LP for Ini.itu,
whose aim is to deal with Indonesian music in new contexts).
Ringing overtones, slowing down, fading out, but then, curiously
returning in a full force, perhaps even a bit louder, and then the
process of decay starts again. Two excellent pieces of modern
classical music with a strong exotic touch. No longer the big
surprise, but a fine continuation of what Grady has already
planted. (Frans de Waard)
JUST OUTSIDE (MARCH 2011)
A new name to me, Kraig Grady is apparently something of a
fixture on the LA scene having absorbed Partch's influence via
studies with one of his apostles, Dean Drummond. Oh, he's also a
resident and perhaps chief honcho of the mysterious
island-nation of Anaphoria, which land mass Google Earth has
conspiratorially removed from its maps, but that's another story?
Well, actually, no, as the two pieces presented herein attempt to
evoke the complex relationship Anaphorians have with their rainy
season, the aptly titled, "Our Rainy Season" is a scored piece for
reads (Jim Denley, bass flute, alto sax and wooden flute) and
string bass (Mike Majkowski), multi-tracked, each musician
improvising on "single notes with extreme pitch accuracy to within
one tenth of a cent." It's long, a bit over 49 minutes, but works
remarkably well within these parameters. Not only is that "single
note" approached in a seemingly ever-changing variety of ways
(each lasting several minutes so that there's no sense of
haphazard rushing about) but, perhaps by virtue of that limit,
there's a very strong structural sense felt throughout. I'm not
sure that the single-note specification holds absolutely at all
times but often enough, the range of timbres and attacks
provides a really impressive amount of variety and easily holds
one's interest. A very fine piece of its type.
"Nuilagi" is for three metallophones (Grady, Erin Barnes and
Jonathan Marmor). I think it's virtually impossible to play finely
tuned metallophones of any ilk and not produce an attractive
sound. It's also difficult to escape that gamelan sound, often an
awkward, if enticing, trap for non-Indonesians. More of an issue
here, for me, is a lack of that tensile strength of the previous
work. Here, while the sounds are enjoyable enough (and some
wonderful sonorities are achieved about 3/4 the way through),
the piece meanders a bit, never concentrating its focus with the
obsessiveness shown earlier. One feels the need for dancers or
shadow puppets to complete the picture.
Still, a good effort and I'm glad to have finally made Mr. Grady's
audio acquaintance. (Brian Olewnick)
