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Christopher Otto — Rag’sma (Greyfade)

(Sound samples available at Greyfade)

As that wonderful old Chicago track had it: “Where do we go from here?” In the sloppy parlance of the terminally hip, we go outside or inside. As with all such soundbites, a kernel of truth resides therein. If all of that New York “free jazz,” with its myriad notes, squalls and anguished shrieks obliterating meter, took us out of the changes-running boxes we made, the minimalists reacting against and building on it brought us inside, so that the innards of each pitch lay stark in front of us. There’s so much more to the story, and both extremes have had enough ink spilled all over them to render mine redundant. Beyond all that, Chris Otto brings another perspective to bear on his full-length compositional debut. In a single and vastly sweeping gesture, Rag’sma embodies the best of academic and mystical revelation with first-class production underpinning it.

Otto is a founding member of the justly celebrated JACK quartet, those purveyors of “new music”’s staggering diversity, bringing their power and precision to everything from Helmut Lachenmann’s pointillistic tone colors to Cenk Ergün’s arm-and-hammer repetitions. It’s doubtful that any other group could be as convincing as they in this dreamily confrontational composition. Otto, a violinist whose music making is also informed by deep mathematical study, offers his piece Rag’sma in two versions on a vinyl slab and a third available as digital download. Briefly, because anything beyond will demonstrate my lack of aural comprehension, the piece is composed for three string quartets, the third being optional. If the third is employed, it is performed live over the other two, which are pre-recorded. The work is written in just intonation, which involves what we think of as microtones but which are really intervals tuned purely, according to ratios. The harmonic basis of the piece is a rajisma, an extremely tiny interval imperceptible to most ears but which, given the quartets’ motion as the music progresses, introduces increasing harmonic complexities.

As you don’t have to run changes to dig Coltrane’s Ascension or expound on overtone when thrilling to Tony Conrad and John Cale’s gorgeously distorted collaborations, the mathematics guiding Rag’sma serves as a single gateway into what is a cosmically awesome experience. There is a feeling, a palpable sensation unlike any other, that comes with a purely tuned interval; it transcends any more familiar sense of cadence or resolution. The various confluences of those purities in juxtaposition lead to internal rhythms which are most readily apparent at a point of relative harmonic stability, as at 3:24 of each version, where my stubbornly Eurocentric ears insist on hearing a dominant chord. It’s much more than that, and depending on whether you’re listening to the two album versions or the composite third, a different set of relationships will surface. A similar point of repose occurs at 7:53, but these are only points on a complex curve of tension and release. Like Eliane Radigue or Randy Gibson, Otto composes in shifting sonic planes, each tone a reflection and expansion of those surrounding and shaping it. Each moment is an amalgamation and a non-conventional point of departure leading nowhere except toward another iteration blurring the already tenuous boundaries between tone, timbre and rhythm. As the texture expands and contracts, all notions of externality and internality become irrelevant. The restless beauty of a journey takes hold and propels the listening experience that it would be folly to label drone, still acknowledging that the requisite kernel of truth applies. As with other sounds that ebb and flow on a huge canvas, simply surrendering to the magic proffers best results.

Marc Medwin

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