When Terry Riley turned 80 last year, the requisite ink was spilled, commemorative concerts played, parties thrown. The byproducts of the ongoing retrospective are still spilling into 2016 as he nears 81, and it makes sense, because it’s hard not to think and talk in gushing platitudes when looking at what Riley wrought in the last half century. Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve felt his influence via "Baba O'Riley," Pete Townsend’s tribute to Riley’s modal improvisation and Meher Baba’s spiritual teachings. You could even credit him with one of the earliest remixes, in 1967, with his tape loop manipulations of the Harvey Averne Dozen's "You're No Good." And of course, there’s In C, which in countless performances has become a living, breathing, and self-generating monument to the minimalist floodgate Riley helped open in 1964.
One of the most interesting homages to Riley took place at London’s Barbican Centre and Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw during April of last year, at a pair of events called Hello Terry Riley. British musicians James Holden and Luke Abbott were invited to compose live improvisational electronic pieces influenced by engagement with Riley’s work. The recordings on Outdoor Museum Of Fractals / 555Hz are taken from their rehearsals prior to the Barbican and Muziekgebouw concerts. In a little over an hour of continuous improvisational performance, Holden and Abbott showcase how making music in the style of Terry Riley could still produce something startlingly new and mesmerizing.
To compose "Outdoor Museum of Fractals" James Holden designed a special sequencer for his modular synthesizer, which works on a perpetually repetitive and purposefully chaotic set of rules, generating a wide range of melodic patterns from even the slightest change in initial input. He claims that the inputs in his system, if mapped in mathematical space, could give you the picture of a fractal—that ubiquitous and eternally mysterious geometrical pattern that naturally occurs in the shape of DNA, snowflakes, ocean waves, the drawings of M. C. Escher, and in the novels of Vladimir Nabokov and David Foster Wallace.
To Holden, the 46 minutes of "Outdoor Museum of Fractals" is a "a very slow tour of some landmarks in this fractal" he created with his co-pilot Camilo Tirado, a tabla player trained in the classical Indian traditions, which Riley drew heavily from in his work. Their two instruments are in constant conversation, as Tirado’s drumming triggers James' arpeggiations. Holden’s use of a sequencer also helps generate more notes and melodies than he could physically play, extending the limitations of his keyboard skills. And if you’ve ever seen videos of Riley playing, Holden’s experiment makes sense, because you quickly realize that very few people have the dexterity and focus to dance between the notes of a keyboard like Riley.
Similar to the best Riley compositions, "Outdoor Museum of Fractals" resembles an exquisitely and almost incomprehensibly detailed model train set, its slow-moving progression unfolding with more and more information and narrative. It’s hard to believe Holden and Tirado’s improvisation sounds as smooth and pleasurable as it does, because Holden’s system is constantly inviting chaos. He described learning how to control his rig as a "blind man feeling around in one small corner with some vague memory of what's nearby."
Abbott’s contribution, "555Hz," is inspired by the numerological and mythological qualities of the number five and an interest in new age theories about the healing properties of specific sonic frequencies. His interest was stoked by Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus, a Renaissance-era manifesto on intelligent design that attributes fractal-like vastness to the number five’s relation to the organization of natural life, from the structure of honeycombs to the leaves of artichokes. "555Hz" is centered around a sine-wave drone tuned to 555Hz and a modified 26'' gong that echoes and resonate in response to slight shifts in the drone.
"555Hz" veers farther from signature Riley sounds, and more closely mirrors La Monte Young’s exploration of drone, specifically in works like Drift Study. This piece is more caustic and less relaxing, but it’s also lighter and more ambient. In that way it is far more meditative than Holden’s, because the ongoing drone never forces the listener to descend into the music, but rather effortlessly float on its surface. Abbott’s piece is also less steady, its pitches shift more wildly, and the sounds climb up and down more athletically throughout. And similar to Holden’s improvisation, it’s hard not to be impressed by the smooth progression of Abbott's performance. There are many moments where the drone unravels, but Abbott’s ability to paint through the chaos of his sounds with perfectly timed gong echoes and slight shifts in the drone’s tone pulls it all together. I’m reminded of Brian Eno’s description of Philip Glass’ music "as a viscous bath of pure, thick energy" when listening to the two companion pieces back to back. In Outdoor Museum of Fractals / 555Hz, Abbott and Holden have demonstrated quite effectively that electronic musicians don’t have to be just guys pressing play on their computers, but very serious and cognitively engaged composers.
