Up Close is an exploration of proximity in all its forms. This score was originally commissioned by the Crispin Spaeth Dance Group and complemented a multimedia performance entitled Up Close by the dance group and Jason Faulknerin December of 2005 at Velocity Dance Center, Seattle.
Track Listing
- Up Close
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Seattle based composer Yann Novak has just issued another gravity-defying piece of sonic gauze. Up Close (Dragon’s Eye 3”CD) was created for a piece by the Crispin Spaeth Dance Group, and listening to it is a little like being inside a cave at the back of a waterfall. Seemingly a mix of generated and natural sounds, the 18 minute piece creates a foreground that comes in and out of focus, against a backdrop that has a very movingly aquatic feel. Don’t be the last one in.
– The WireSeattle-based sound designer/dismantler Yann Novak has been all over the style map via his label, everything noise-infused, drone-derived, and glitch-glutted—he’s one of many little-known and underappreciated American ‘scape-artists. Too bad, too, as Dragon’s Eye has been releasing some sterling documentation on the CDR format as of late. Take these two cool lit’l 3”s. On Dark Room, Novak does a sort of reductionist riff on Merzbow, softening the blast wave with discernible atmospheres and a teeming detail of well-coordinated tings, tangs and thrums; I’d be happy if its 20-minute length were easily doubled. Up Close gets quite personal, eschewing the brash for the blippy; these alien symphonies are practically jaunty, extraterrestrial juju for Martian jukeboxes. Interstellar, and, well, quite stellar.
– e/i Magazine