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you can hear and purchase 'two / twenty-two'
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Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family. Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart. Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly. Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22. Marc Weidenbaum |
Fluid Radio, Nathan Thomas Learning to speak another language is hard: I translate my words into your words, but voice them according to my own rules. You filter them through your own set of associations and nuances, and what you hear is not what I wanted to say. Confusion results. Understanding each other requires paying careful attention to details that had previously gone unnoticed: the contexts, usage patterns, and micro-histories of words. When Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer discovered that they shared the same birthday, 22nd February, they decided to celebrate by swapping voices. Each would compose a track using only sounds provided by the other: Allen would supply 30 sounds (reflecting his age), Fischer 35. Two birthdays. Two tracks. Twenty-two minutes. A simple idea, but one that pushed both artists to experiment, to employ different approaches, to try thinking in another person’s language. Discomfort zone. It could have been a disaster, but both Allen and Fischer managed to pull something surprising and delightful out of the bag. Allen took the sounds sent to him by Fischer and wove them into a pulsating, rhythmic slice of glowing ambience entitled “Eighty-Two”. (Try counting.) The piece is lively and full of energy, at times recalling the shimmering, hypnotic work of minimalists Phillip Glass and Steve Reich. If Allen’s track foregrounds rhythm, then Fischer emphasises melody and harmony for his piece “Seventy-Seven”, focusing on Allen’s piano and guitar sounds. Listen closely. What you hear is closer to a sort of pastoral musicality – a sort of landscape – than Fischer has previously dared to venture. Chords thrum. Tunes chime. You could say that if Allen’s track is the wind-driven spiralling and soaring of birds, then Fischer’s is a full-on dawn chorus. Both pieces have their moments of quiet contemplation, before ending, as if in unspoken agreement, in a resounding, hair-raising cacophony of noise. A comparison of how these two endings are handled reveals more about each artist’s approach than hours spent analysing their work separately. The pair have decided to make the release available as a pay-what-you-want download from 22nd February, with a suggested price of $2.22. Don’t panic. What may have started out as a light-hearted play on coincidence has produced work of serious substance and merit from both artists. At first listen it is even a little disconcerting – like hearing a favourite poem recited in another language, albeit one you understand. But such an experience brings out inflections and subtleties that previously went unheard, and provides another angle on that which remains untranslatable. Highly recommended! . . .
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