Though weaned on Varese, Hendrix, Trane, Cecil Taylor, Sonny Sharrock, Albert Ayler, Stravinsky, Captain Beefheart, Stockhausen: the universe cracked open for me in 1968 on first hearing the music of Iannis Xenakis, a composer who had captured the glorious chaos of subatomic weather in a cloud chamber, found fibrillating grooves in burning charcoal, the majestic blues of the elliptical arc, and sonified the chaos imbuing the natural order of the universe. While most composers made music with notes, Xenakis transformed pure philosophies into sound. With his experiences as a mathematician and architect equally informing his musical approach, Xenakis manifested these connections in emotive and exciting compositions that made clear the mapping of independent processes to those in sound. Not content to make overwhelming music, Xenakis also outlined his thoughts and methods in his volume Formalized Music.

My old friend Henry Kaiser shares my passion for the music of Xenakis as well as for many other musical visionaries. For this tribute we hypothesized a Xenakis tribute band to make audio reconstructions of key compositions by the master for which we added fellow intrepid explorers Brandon Lopez and Scott Amendola. This project was conceived and executed during lockdown which necessitated remote recording (though Brandon was able to record his tracks at Studio zOaR). The title of each piece is an anagram that reflects the elements of its source. Pieces were mixed to create the fiction of a live band playing in a room. For the coda, Henry mixed all of the tracks together to create our own neutron-star-density Stochastic Rock.



Minus X Artist Bios:



Born in New Jersey and long based in Berkeley, CA, Scott Amendola has woven a dense and far-reaching web of bandstand relationships that tie him to leading artists in jazz, blues, rock, new music and beyond.A creative catalyst as a bandleader, composer, and accompanist, he’s collaborated closely with artists such as guitarists Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, John Schott and Charlie Hunter, organist Wil Blades, violinists Jenny Scheinman and Regina Carter, saxophonists Larry Ochs and Phillip Greenlief, and clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who’ve all forged singular paths within and beyond the realm of jazz. He’s led or co-led some two dozen albums and contributed to more than 100 recordings.



Grammy winning guitarist Henry Kaiser operates diversely in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics. The California-based musician is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 350 different albums and contributed to countless television and film soundtracks. He is also a longtime research diver in the US Antarctic Program.



Brandon Lopez is a New York-based composer and bassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. His music has been praised as “brutal” (Chicago Reader) and “relentless” (The New York Times). From the New York Philharmonic's David Geffen Hall to the DIY basements of Brooklyn, Lopez has collaborated with such artistic luminaries as Fred Moten, Tyshawn Sorey, Sun Ra Arkestra, Okkyung Lee, Tony Malaby, Chris Potter, Edwin Torres, Tom Rainey, Cecilia Lopez, Susan Alcorn, among others.



Elliott Sharp, composer, producer, author, and visual artist, leads Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane and whose compositional strategies encompass fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithmic approaches, genetic metaphors, and new techniques for graphic notation. He has been awarded the Berlin Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, and the Center for Transformative Media. Sharp's collaborators have included Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Cecil Taylor; Ensemble Modern; Debbie Harry; JACK and Arditti quartets; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; Jack Dejohnette; Sonny Sharrock; media artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; the Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; and Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka.





www.elliottsharp.com
zoar-records.bandcamp.com
www.instagram.com/elliott_sharp/
elliottsharp.substack.com
mitpress.mit.edu/books/irrational-music