Dance of the Luminifera (Vacuum Energy 15)

It's all about patterns...
This is a later entry in the Vacuum Energy series, following on from Slow Harmonic Motion and A Calamity in the Clockwork Factory. As in those pieces, 12 voices play sequences of randomly-shuffled notes, with each voice arranged at compass-points around the listener's head (the video uses a binaural mixdown). This time, the notes are drawn from particular chords, rather than chromatic or harmonic scales. One pattern here is the order in which the 12 voices sound, starting with the front/top at the start of each bar, and bouncing across the compass, always in the same order; 12 voices over 16 beats, with gaps. The voices use a variety of sounds, though fewer than in Calamity.
The chord sequence is the same as Nocturne and Sunrise, so to some extent this is an offshoot (or a tributary?) of the Cascades Sequence. There are two patterns here: at the inner level, the chords are rooted on E, D, A, G and F; at the outer level, there are four chord shapes, starting with min6+9 and ending with maj6+9, with a longer final E maj6+9. The tempo is slow, but speeds up for the third chord-shape section; slow changes in tempo introduce "delay artefact" wobbles that add a sense of unease. Chordal pads build up over each chord, and the change to the next chord is "heralded" by a bell-like link phrase, whose echoes linger on at the start of the next chord. This makes the transition from F back down to E (now on a different chord shape) distinctively discordant.
The video reflects the music closely. Each voice has a visualisation in a fixed position on-screen corresponding to its compass-point (north is up, south is down, etc.); a smoky central visualisation reflects both the chordal pads and the link phrases. The background colour roughly corresponds to each of the four chord shapes (blue, green, red, yellow); this bears a distant similarity to the colouring in No-Sleep of Reason.
Brian Ritchie - composition, programming, video
August 2024 (video September)
Related Works:
Slow Harmonic Motion ( • Slow Harmonic Motion (... )
A Calamity in the Clockwork Factory ( • A Calamity In The Cloc... )
Nocturne and Sunrise ( • Nocturne and Sunrise (... )
No-Sleep of Reason ( • No-Sleep of Reason (Ca... )
Defections And Descent Lead To Dischord ( • Defections And Descent... )
Always Coming Back II ( • Always Coming Back II ... )