For this piece, the inauguration speeches of US presidents. Obama (2009) and Trump (2017) were edited into single words (over 4000 of them). and then placed alphabetically. It is "constraint music", more overtly processual than political. Still, it is impossible not to compare the delivery and content of the two speeches. Perhaps most surprising are the number of words used by both presidents: not just "and" (82 occurrences) and "the" (75) but also "blood", "God" and "winter". Given that the duration of the two speeches is over 35 minutes, a lot of space was closed up between the words and in a number of places the audio is accelerated to varying degrees. For the most part the instrumental parts are derived directly from the audio without any attempt at extra-musical commentary.
credits
from decompression: chamber music XVI [2019],
released March 19, 2019
Kirsten Smith - flute, Lindsay Vickery - bass clarinet, Jameson Feakes - electric guitar, Catherine Ashley - harp, Erik Griswold - prepared piano and Vanessa Tomlinson - percussion
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