VA - The Consent of Sound and Meaning: Music of Eric Richards (2023) [Hi-Res]

The Mouth of Night for twelve “breathers,” focuses our attention on the intimate sounds of exhalation and inhalation. By limiting the vocalist to breathing sounds with no annunciation of syllables, much less words, Richards explores a pre-linguistic state in which sonic meaning is the byproduct of elemental bodily function. The earliest work on the album, Rocks; Gardens (1970) is a kaleidoscopic duo for trumpet and piano that trades variations of articulations and gesture between the two instruments, highlighting how different similar material can sound on contrasting sound producing objects. Kozar plays into the strings of the piano towards the end of the piece while pianist Steve Beck holds down the sustain pedal, triggering sympathetic resonance and fusing the two instruments in a hybrid, sonic halo.

Owls, Too for six female voices excerpts texts from an Edward Elgar song about the beguiling qualities of nature. Staggered leaps in the soprano dart up from closely spaced clusters in the ensemble, as Richards captures the unsettling mystery of the sounds of the natural world. Fire, Fire!, for baritone voice, trumpet, trombone, and bass clarinet and performed here by loadbang, is a setting of a text by Renaissance lute composer Thomas Campion. Richards paints Campion’s lyrical text with pointillistic gestures in the trumpet and bass clarinet and undulating figures in the trombone, preserving the verse structure and something of the cadence of Renaissance song despite the characteristically contemporary intervallic leaps in the vocal part.

Hymn to Santa Maria (Rotting Christ) for two baritone voices and six cuícas is based on the song “Santa Maria” by Greek metal band Rotting Christ. The cuica (a Brazilian friction drum) remarkably mimics the rumbling of distorted bass and low register guitar chords as Jeff Gavett’s sinister overdubbed baritone tracks intone lyrics from the Greek group’s song. The studio plays a prominent role in the track as it evolves, processing the vocals with ring modulation and other effects.

The title track and the longest work in this collection, The Consent of Sound and Meaning was the first piece Richards composed using the tape recorder as a tool. He recorded a violin on tape, and subsequently reversed, looped, and manipulated it, then transcribing the results to create the ten double bass parts. After eight minutes of patient mining of these sounds from every angle, we hear the seven trumpet parts enter, which are similarly a transcription of a recording of an ambulance siren. The brilliant luminosity of the texture belies its genesis, unfolding as a meditation on simple sonic building blocks, and the symbiotic relationship between sound and meaning.

– Dan Lippel