by Steven Miller
Steve Reich’s music has long depended on a clear premise: of steady pulse and layered harmonic materials. This is used to develop his compositions over time. His sextet works focus on that by distributing rhythm and harmony across interlocking compositional theme. With groups moving in poly-tonal and poly-rhythmic patterns anchored by a grounding pedal. Anchoring them in a manner that provides context.
With Steve Reich: The Sextets, the Colin Currie Group presents these works as variations on Reich’s composition structural logic. The ensemble has a long-term relationship with [...]
by Steven Miller
It’s the Long Goodbye is a ten-track sound painting, where layers of sound carry what language cannot through building and receding. The Twilight Sad narrate loss as an emotional reaction built over time, stacking sounds, harmonic moods, and pressures until something finally gives.
What defines this record is its multi-layered escalation and controlled release. Songs constantly grow, accumulating a mood and energy, the pressure against rest and peacefulness. Synth arpeggios, distorted guitar fields, haunting backing vocal counterlines, all layered and pressing forward against a [...]
by Steven Miller
Agua Con Gas is best understood as a project of arrangements and compositional architecture that is brought to life by a talented set of ensembles. Dave Schumacher leads a set of nine tracks realized through Cubeye’s performances of layered ensemble writing and sectional development. Each selection’s form acts as the primary mechanism for integrating ensemble textures and improvisational settings. Drawing from a balance of original compositions and reimagined material, the album is filled with enjoyable harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic content.
That approach is realized through Cubeye’s [...]
by Steven Miller
Days of Ash is a six-track EP built around longtime bandmates Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitar), Adam Clayton (bass), and Larry Mullen Jr. (drums), with additional vocal layering on select tracks. Across its runtime, the project presents a consistent arrangement model in which traditional rock roles such as drums as primary time driver, guitar as riff generator, and bass as rhythmic anchor are structurally reassigned at the system level. Rather than organizing movement through articulated rhythmic interaction, the EP establishes a structure centered on sustained, layered signal fields, where continuity is maintained through [...]
