Change Ringing
CutBrainwashed
← backChange Ringing follows Block’s Pure Gaze and Mobius Fuse in a trilogy of sorts, and like those beloved pieces, Change is a perfectly paced, not-a-second-too-short, 30-minute suite for chamber group and environment, ever in a limbo state between where found sound ends, instrumentation begins, and where digital processing tangles the timeline.
The piece feels more subtle and more defined than its predecessors: mainly because there is more open space, more quiet, more of the nagging sense of each sound’s designation in both breaking down the transparency of the whole and working within it. Pure Gaze and Mobius Fuse worked first as beauteous, lush journeys aloft on the dream currents of muffled fireworks, bowed strings, night insects and organ wash. Only later would the pieces break down and settle in the mind, letting some kind of science develop out of Block’s diverse archeology. Change Ringing feels intent on rushing that settling.
The opening trombone bleat/fog horn/synthetic blast (you can never tell) acts almost like a volume check, setting up for a close listen. The section of gurgling, chirping tones that follows remind me of works by Matthew Schumacher and their creation of an immaterial surface that rustles, fades, and pops without becoming so effervescent as to engage its own disappearance or shimmer away. Snatches of woody, resonant instruments closely recorded bounce off of pure tones and the slight cracks of something outside, in a blanket of thick, gliding strands. Another fog horn from the silence brings the second phase, the bizarre traffic of fire-cracking static, an earthy rustle, and the parts of a few instruments, no doubt including Bhob Rainey’s sax in full clap and miniature shuffle.
The key, of course, is Block’s recording method and volumetric arrangements; high volume listening really pulls the head in thousand places, and average levels will have you in a pleasant straining for the details. Change’s conclusion is a stew of quiet commotion, outsides, insides, and inbetweens gathering in a blissful flux of indescribable direction. Chamber stings equal underwater poolhall equal screaming blues of sky inside a twist of bark: a squabbling that is not uniform, not even a working together, but a fitting together, a wonderful, befitting fitting together.
– Andrew Culler , Brainwashed