Sam Pluta - Actuate/Resonate

 Sam Pluta - Actuate/Resonate

    Pluta has an uncanny ear for timbre when mixing electronics with a large ensemble. Picking out which sounds are electronic versus which are acoustic is borderline impossible for large swaths of the music, and the listener never gets too distracted by the integrated electronics until it is practically too late to ignore. 

    While Actuate / Resonate eerily creeps along for fourteen and a half minutes, a slumbering mechanical beast begins to awaken from within the group. The title, Actuate / Resonate, perfectly fits the work, with resonate being almost too heavy-handed of a pun between the musical and technical definitions.

    By the end of the work, Pluta establishes what could be defined as an intensely rhythmic groove, with each and every hit being doubled by electronic and acoustic sounds. He truly created a work not for ensemble and electronics, but for a chamber ensemble which contains electronics (watch here).

 

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originally written and published 16 April 2022

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