Rhizomatic Music (Thought Patterns)
Released March 24, 2020 on Linear Obsessional Recordings.
The full album can be found, streamed and purchased here.
Design and visual art by Keigo Hara @ harasite.
A brief background:
In 1972 postmodernist philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari coined and developed the concept of the “rhizome”- an “image of thought” that had multiple non-linear outcomes and whose root inspiration is to be found in a botanical rhizome. The rhizome became a thought experiment and subsequently a kind practice of decentralising a singular narrative with the political, social and historical arena. Comprised of many interlocking, synchronous and syncopated cycles, the rhizome exhibits a multiplicity of rhythmic striations. With this ever fluctuating form, the awareness and practiced use of the rhizome made possible the thought of many variant endings to any given experience. History is not only written by the victors.
The rhizome also points to the non-linearity of time and unfolding events: it pushes preconceived assumptions aside, while decentralising human perception and bias. With this humbling shift of stable ground, the human experience and our perception thereof can be seen as a series of asynchronous loops: physiologically, psychologically and spiritually. When we look at events passed with a new perspective, we see our shortcomings and or triumphs over a situation. Simple phenomenon, such as light and sound, are inherently relativistic and thus lend themselves to a myriad different experiencing possibilities. Every moment is new and no two experiences are the same.
Perhaps the human mind is much like a river- it never truly ceases to flow and make waves while drifting in and out of its own feedback loops and eddies. Thoughts are soft whispers in a canyon. Thoughts are fleeting moments to the grave. Thoughts make the unreal real.
The act of com-posing is the act of placing one object after another in a sequence. With this context, the act of thinking is the act of composing. In society we say something along the lines of “Compose yourself,” as a means to return to normalcy or equilibrium. Another angle is that the act of listening and experiencing is also the act of composing. This has been voiced and reiterated via the Deep Listening work of Pauline Oliveros and co. In other words: the work that you are about to hear is only rhizomatic because you have a mind that is also a rhizome. 1 (You) + 1 (the Sound) = 3 (the Experience).
This work is an attempt to write a type of music that allows for listeners and active participants to drift in and out of in a rhizomatic fashion. Each composition consists of a series of pentatonic tones and their consequent acoustically beating counterparts. The dissonance of the beating not only allows for a polyrhythmic experience- allowing the listener to mentally move through different time signatures, as well as physically moving through space to navigate the physicality of the tones and their unfolding beats in spacetime. Each composition on (side A) is a recording of a larger composition. Essentially, each track is an experimentation/variation/deviation or “Thought Pattern” from a master track which holds all of musical and rhythmic possibilities and which you will find on (side B). The navigation, physical and mental, of each polyrhythmic composition is an independent, though tangential, act of composing. Through a conscious act of Deep Listening, the listener themselves becomes the conscious composer and relativistic participant.
There are, as hinted at before, a seemingly unending list of various methods of experiencing this work. Though it is sometimes, in certain spaces and mindsets, a subtle phenomenon to perceive- these pieces can perceived from different angles. Physical and mental positioning within the space these pieces are presented in plays a large role in how they unfold. Certain spatial polyrhythmic beats can be witnessed, as the listener moves through the standing waves and beats, in and out of the peaks and troughs of each wave. Depending on where the listener chooses to stand, there are musical options throughout the space and a milieu of micro-experience to be had. I deem these to be “Thought Patterns”, in the style of and in homage to the Deleuzian term.
(Just in time for the quarantine <3)