Modernist composer Alex Zethson here with his Residy (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT16 / SUPERPANG 126). We did hear him last leading a small team of players called the Alex Zethson Ensemble, but this one is a solo performance on which he plays all the parts himself using synthesizers, piano, and e-bows.
A long-from droner, it’s been scored using the work of J.S. Bach as a basis, in particular elements of the Goldberg Variation No. 21. Zethson has pretty much deconstructed (or dismantled) the work, taken whatever parts are left in a highly selective fashion, and used these to build his own new chords. In spite of this, he claims he’s still left the basic structure of the work intact, and all the notes are in the original Bach order. That may be true. Residy unfolds at such a slow pace I think you’d have to be very familiar with Bach’s work in order to attempt a mental reconstruction or attempt a comparison, but that might not be the point of the work anyway. What is the point? Well, Zethson believes he can never play the Goldberg Variations himself correctly, or at least not in a way that correctly honours Bach’s intentions, so instead he’s opted for this, which (for him) amounts to an intense exploration of the core of the work. I suppose Douglas Gordon also imagines he’s honouring Alfred Hitchcock’s intentions with his 24-Hour Psycho installation, but in that instance he merely slowed down a projector’s speed to get the result he wanted – he didn’t remake, or rephotograph, the film. At least Zethson has put in the effort required to build this semi-conceptual reworking, one that is so minimal and drawn-out that it seems (to me) to depart a very long way from the density and complexity of Bach’s music.
If Bach’s music can indeed be likened to a piece of Baroque architecture, Zethson flies in the face of received wisdom and overturns our expectations by building a Brutalist concrete blockhouse covered in white paint. As with the last piece we heard, Some Of Them Were Never Unprepared, Alex Zethson indicates he’s striving to create a situation where the edges of the sound become blurred, to the extent that neither the performers nor the listener know where they’re coming from or what’s happening, a process whereby he hopes to build “sensitive, tactile and meditative spaces”, inviting us to enter them, where we too may enjoy the feeling of floating, experience new sensations, and make new connections between things. Residy didn’t quite provide the hoped-for epiphany for this listener, although there’s more focus this time with the man himself playing all the parts and perhaps thereby sticking closer to his vision. There’s a certain warmth and intensity to be found in the very extended drone sounds, particularly those produced by the e-bows, and if played back at high volumes you might begin to experience the sense of space he promises. From 27 July 2022.