Helvacioglu, Erdem - Altered Realities
SKU
NA131
Really nice album by an up-and-coming Turkish composer. "Altered Realities is an album of solo acoustic guitar and live electronics. All of the compositions were recorded in real-time, directly to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) without any overdubs, mixing, editing, post-processing, or the use of previously recorded material. All of the textures were created based only on the acoustic guitar signal with no other sound source used during the recording. Within these textures, there are long sustaining single notes, beautiful shimmering chords and rhythmic clusters." "Erdem Helvagioglu first broke through to the international audience with his Walk Through the Bazaar...a collection of sounds from the bazaar in Istanbul that he worked to create an emotional tour. On this record the listener is presented with the performer, on live guitar with live electronics and processing. This kind of work is straight up 'new music' and has strong affinities to the downtown, improvised and modern classical currents that are being played throughout the capitals of the world. His sensibility is not obviously Turkish, though, but more of a cosmopolitan wanderer into and through the situations this type of musical theater creates. Once music starts there is a force of time that is continually active with the sounds that are happening. In composed music the composer invents the framework and the performer lives within it. In this style of live electronics the sense of time, of a current pushing the moment, is stronger...chaos beckons. Helvacioglu comes into circumstances where reality begins to come apart, threatening to collapse the song, and then melodic hooks bring the player and listener back to familiar terrain. This work is haunting, almost disturbing, at times and then builds from those elements into lyrical passages of beauty in song."