Kyle Grimm - Compulsion Loops
Kyle Grimm - Compulsion Loops
The 'barrage of square waves' employed in the piece allow Grimm to get away with demented musical ideas, while still enabling the audience to comprehend them.
Compulsion Loops, composed and performed by Kyle Grimm, is a wild and energetic work written for Max/MSP and a Nintendo GameCube™ controller. The work is somehow both lovingly nostalgic and terrifyingly anxiety-inducing. Grimm performs the entire work using just his controller to trigger and change sounds in MAX. I would love if in future performances Grimm hooks up a small hand camera so that we can watch the controller being using in live time. It would increase the amount of interest in watching the performance, almost as if Grimm is literally 'controlling' the music.
The 'barrage of square waves' employed in the piece allow Grimm to get away with demented musical ideas, while still enabling the audience to comprehend them. Using relatively simple and recognizable sounds, which are historically associated with video games, also helps the audience understand both the musical choices and the logistical choice of performing the work on a GameCube™ controller. Most striking is Grimm's decision on how to end the work, with slow glissandi transporting the music to a completely different sound realm, until it becomes overbearing, then suddenly fading to nothing.
Listen to the live performance of Compulsion Loops here.
Comments
Post a Comment