Rhys Chatham was a flute player until he heard the Ramones and switched to guitar. That's an oversimplification of the pioneering musician and composer's history, but it still says a lot about his unique methods. Throughout his 45-year career, Chatham has translated styles associated with instruments like the flute—classical, formal, studied—into the primal power of rock-based electric guitar. This mix of the high-minded and the lizard-brained holds when Chatham plays other instruments, even when he conducts 400 of them.
Chatham revisits his formative flute/guitar dichotomy on Pythagorean Dream, an album he made by himself—a rarity in his heavily collaborative discography. One side focuses on repetitive, ringing guitar, while the other offers a fluid, morphing flute drone. But the approach for both— devout minimalism seeking transcendence via preset forms—is clearly unified, to the point where the two 19-minute pieces rhyme with each other. Both sides loop and build, mimicking the hypnotic repetitions of nature.
Chatham uses tape delay to create overlapping lines, in the tradition of Terry Riley’s tape loops. This allows Chatham to accompany himself, slowly reflecting sounds back and forth in a hall of sonic mirrors. On side one, he also employs Pythagorean tuning. I’m not technically versed enough to hear what difference that makes (nor are most listeners), but I do know there’s a precision to each note and chord that gives Chatham’s guitar a patient reverence, like we’re witnessing wordless prayer.
Side two feels even more intimate. As Chatham’s flute tones progress, they get smaller and closer. At points, it sounds as if they’re being whispered in your ear. Throughout, both pieces tremble with giddy energy, but also exude a calm atmosphere in their chiming overtones. In the end, flute and guitar fully unite: The former folds into the latter in a triumphant refrain that soars so high it sounds light-headed, as if Chatham is dizzied by his own playing.
Lightness might be seen as a drawback by some of Chatham’s contemporaries, but it’s always been welcome in his multi-toned music. His sunny, humorous personality shines through in everything he does, whether he’s playing with different musicians every night or simply directing an army of players from behind a conductor’s stand. But there's something more naturally personal about Pythagorean Dream, in the way its multitude of vibrations emanate from Chatham alone. He’s using a language that he created—a language that's not hard for other musicians to learn or interpret, but one that only Chatham speaks fluently.
