Alvin Curran - Animal Behavior (1995)

Two very different compositions are featured on this album. "Animal Behavior" is a wholly sampled collection of blips and moans, musical bits, and animal sounds interspersed with the spoken word fragments of President George Bush. The samples are run through loops, slowed down, sped up, and otherwise altered to produce a cacophonous sound that is jarring to the ear and mind. Like his fellow Mills College colleagues, Alvin Curran makes use of technology to bend and chip music into a form that he likes. The second piece on the album, "Why Is This Night Different Than All Other Nights?," takes a perhaps more conventional approach with its mostly acoustic sound, but produces a result that is equally experimental -- prepared piano and "unleavened percussion" combine with accordion, violin, and tuba to make a piece that was originally composed for the Trisha Brown dance company and intended to be danceable without any melody or rhythmic direction -- not surprisingly, she rejected it for being "too powerful." It is indeed powerful, extremely minimal, and acts as an interesting counterpoint to the chaos of Animal Behavior. This album is not always easy to listen to, but there is some thought behind it, and it gives some promise of future good things to come from Alvin Curran. - Stacia Proefrock, AMG