Keeril Makan

The strength of these pieces by American composer Keeril Makan is that they fall outside the boxes of minimalism, abstract electronic music, and world-influenced styles. The word visceral keeps coming up in his descriptions of his own music, which revels in sheer sound and proceeds in large, physical gestures with, Makan says blithely, "no formal logic other than careful attunement to what the ear and body dictate." Paradoxically, though, it's full of surprises. The three works on the album all fall loosely under the chamber music banner and are all recognizably by the same composer, but each has a different method. Perhaps the least satisfactory is the opening The Noise Between Thoughts, where the Kronos Quartet is asked to do a yeoman's job in making the instruments of the string quartet sound like electronics. The range of textures is impressively extreme, but the piece is a gimmick at its heart. Threads has a more diverse set of instruments but an almost static framework that forces the ear toward textural relationships among the contrasting pair of violin and bass clarinet, a marimba lumina, electronic percussion and keyboard, and a bowed electric guitar that alternately falls into the electronic and acoustic camps. The final Washed by Fire, composed for string quartet in 2007 and clocking in at nearly 23 minutes, was, according to the composer, motivated by "the desire to explore issues of cultural and personal identity. By embracing musical references that my mind often avoids, I was able to reconnect with rhythm, melody, and mode." This may sound like a rather tortured explanation for using common elements of musical language, but Makan's piece is unique. The cultural identity he refers to seems to be his partly Indian background; the music does not really sound Indian but somewhat resembles the alap opening section in a North Indian classical performance. (It should be noted that Makan himself does not propose this connection.) The music circles around static tonalities that together define a melodic mode and finally come to rest on a giant plagal cadence lasting several minutes; fixed rhythms delineate, emphasize, and ornament the individual sections in various ways. All three of these works are sizable, but they hold the listener's attention over long stretches of time. The recording, executed at the pop-oriented studio the Plant in Sausalito, CA, realizes Makan's loud, somewhat aggressive sound beautifully. Recommended for those who enjoy the long tradition of extended technique deployed in support of sheer sonic sensation.