For composers exploring indeterminacy in music, the
compositional process is no doubt fascinating, but often rough
going for the audience. The intellectual process of rolling dice or
randomizing numbers in order to create a chance arrangement
of notes or tones brings forth groundbreaking new music as
often as it does headaches in listeners. The collection
FLUIDITIES explores aspects of randomness as a
compositional tool, and enjoys consistently pleasing results.
Jonathan Hughes has designed this double disc set to provide a
distribution of uses and outcomes. Each CD includes 11 six
minute tracks with a common tonal center, half of which were
authored by Hughes, and the other half by ambient luminaries
including: M Bentley, Ian Boddy, Tetsu Inoue, Saul Stokes and
several others. Perhaps some or all of the artists involved here
have used indeterminacy as part of their creative process, but
this concept is most obvious during the playback and
consumption of this album. At its most basic, FLUIDITIES can be
played straight through and enjoyed like a normal collection of
quality ambient music; each track standing on its own as a
complete realization of electro-acoustic minimalism. But for a
deeper experience, Hughes suggests playing the discs
simultaneously. Two CD players will be necessary, preferably
each with a shuffle mode. The many possible configurations
include using two different hi-fi systems in two different rooms or
floors of your house, or mixing the discs together through one
stereo, utilizing the decks' shuffle and repeat modes to create an
orderless continuous playlist. The results are surprisingly
congruous and range from the amorphous - as in montages of
generic chaos - to the harmonic - an intelligently designed,
seemingly pre-planned sonic convergence. As mentioned
before, artists do often use indeterminacy in their compositional
process, with the results recorded and accessed again and
again in the listening to of the recorded output. Over time, a
sense of familiarity can build up, as can a sense of beginning,
middle and end of each piece. This is achieved less readily with
FLUIDITIES as the music flows continuously like a non-lineal
collage, haphazardly drifting through (potentially) many hundreds
of hours of unique, non-repeating ambient soundscapes.
FLUIDITIES can also be thought of as a series of virtual
collaborations. For example, spinning track 6 from disc 1
("Hostile Phone" by Suzanne Brokesch) concurrently with track
11 from disc 2 ("Indelible Ink" by Interstitial) will yield a new and
unnamed piece credited to this duo, who may have yet to actually
meet. Describing FLUIDITIES does involve an amount of
intellectual heavy lifting, but this album speaks with more than
just a vocabulary of formulas. Randomness may be its unique
feature, but we must be reminded that there is no such thing as
disconnected parts, only complex structure.

Tune in to STAR'S END this weekend for an entire hour of
randomly mixed music from FLUIDITIES

For more on FLUIDITIES access: http://www.foundrysite.com

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STAR'S END broadcasts every Saturday night/Sunday morning
from 1am-6am (EDST) on:

88.5fm WXPN Philadelphia, PA
88.1fm WXPH Harrisburg, PA
90.5fm Worton/Baltimore, MD
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and live on the web...

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Chuck van Zyl
Host of STAR'S END Ambient Radio
http://www.starsend.org