Racer Session #135 | Chemical Clock | September 9, 2012
Something that I’ve greatly appreciated about working with Ray, Mark, and Evan in the context of Chemical Clock is our approach to rendering written compositions into performances. The written parts that I bring to rehearsals are enough to provide a strong skeleton for any given piece, but not nearly enough to dictate the specifics of the piece, the affects we are trying to evoke, or even in the case of some pieces, the form of the piece. I like to bring in music and essentially open the forum for ways to arrive at a final rendering, and this give and take of ideas into shaping pieces has been a rewarding experience for me, and hopefully, the rest of the group.
For the session tonight we will play 2 brand new pieces that we plan on taking on the road, in addition to one semi-new piece.
“Signs of Life” has a clear three-part form: A disjointed contrapuntal melodic statement, a shameless smash/metal “blowing section”, and a chorale-like section that grows from nauseating chords into bright and happy ones.
“Squid” is an energetic piece that focuses on filtering certain rhythmic patterns through shifting harmonic lenses.
“Aorta” includes two unison statements of a melody, with another shameless metal “blowing section” sandwiched in between.
There you have it. We hope to see you there, and look forward to kick off our West Coast tour with a night at Racer.
-Cameron Sharif