Single compact disc with album art. Photography by Kait Miller, paint work by Kevin Shaw, design by yours truly.
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about
violin, viola, flugelhorn, trombone, french horn, tuba, electronics
Inspired by retro science fiction, as well as a collection of Arthur C. Clark short stories by the same name, The Other Side of the Sky is an experiment in tone, color, and sound. The brass instruments begin with a chorale like chant establishing the piece's mood, with assistance by the droning sounds of Saturn, tuned to the key's home tonic of Ab Major. As the piece develops, the strings are introduced and become the central driving force of the piece. Written similarly to a Concerto where the featured instrument engages in a back and forth dialogue with the accompaniment, here the strings act as the foreground instrument, with the brass layering luscious pads of sounds underneath and engaging in their own dialogue with the strings.
There is no true moment of ecstasy in the piece, no "peak" that the piece eventually reaches. The piece entertains the build up of sounds and tension while referencing and developing the initial Brass chorale, but is much more interested in the dramatic aftermath of that tension and the space surrounding it, as opposed to the climaxes they can sometimes create.
The electronic sounds, the majority of which were collected by the Kepler and Cassini spacecrafts and released by NASA, are triggered at moments in the piece to aid in establishing the tone and atmosphere. Near the end of the piece, the sounds fade away as the strings pluck out their final expressions into nothingness before fading off into the void. A soothing ambient pad then picks up the piece in a sort of epilogue, where the strings repeat in unison a broken and vague musical idea before drifting off forever into space. Recommended listening at the end of your day.
credits
from Palettes,
released October 7, 2019
Mia Nardi-Huffman - violin
Justine Preston - viola
Mason Grainger - flugelhorn
Brendan Lai-Tong - trombone
Alyx Henderson - french horn
Adam Norton - tuba
Taylor Joshua Rankin - electronics
Recording and mixing by Adam Hirsch at Tiny Telephone, Oakland
Mastering by Jacob Winik at Tiny Telephone, Oakland
A work of beautiful, pointillist guitar from Martyn Heyne, the moving songs on “Electric Intervals” are made of tiny pinpricks of sound. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 11, 2017