There is a spot somewhere in the black hills of Virginia where if you stand in the just the right way at just the right angle and time of day, it seems like you are defying the laws of nature and gravity. This kooky place is located near a nondescript turn off the road (not an interstate), and the locals all look like bit players from Deliverance, but, for sure, there is something spooky in them thar hills. This particular amusement site charges a buck to enter and there are mirrors everywhere to let you view your feat of gravity defying wonder. Lookey there! Yes, the mirror clearly shows your body standing at a 45 degree angle against the site's black coal walls--this is (surprise) a former mine, after all. But beyond the questionable science of the place, you leave with a funny feeling in your stomach, like something is not quite right. That place still gives me the willies, just thinking about it.

That same sense of dread and wonder, science and shenanigans is found in the music of Michael Harrison's Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation. A protégé of old school piano destructor La Monte Young, Michael Harrison uses what is known as Just Intonation to give his piano playing that extra little kick. Imagine you are falling off a skyscraper, or being pulled deep to the ocean floor by an unseen force.  Bottom is top and top is bottom, the earth is pulled out from under you and all that is left is your imagination, and that damning, beautiful piano dripping colors through the space. The 12 pieces of Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation sound simple enough on first listen, but as the pieces build, refract and climb, your mind is pulled along with the flow, like an irresistible force drawing an inanimate object. You want to stop, get away and go back to your own head space, but the music won't let you. Harrison sounds at times like he is playing an out of tune upright piano, his two handed technique upsetting the usual ways we "hear" the instrument. But soon enough, as the harmonies overlap and the rhythms jumble and fuse, your mind surrenders to Harrison's peculiar beauty/madness. This is sonic music akin to flying over a pristine lake with no plane, skydiving without landing, or being taken up in the air with the saints.

New Age piano for punk rockers and Yoko Ono phobes? Go ahead. Jump in the deep end of "Tone Cloud II."

 

Michael Harrison
"Tone Cloud II" (mp3)
from "Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation"
(Cantaloupe Music)

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Emerging artist alert: Six Degrees records has a fondness for finding new dance artists, and typically from India or Brazil (or is that San Francisco?) With today's digital technology that cool Pakistani dub DJ could actually be Hermann from WalMart. It's so hard to know what is real, what is a sample, what is played by human hands, or what is simply programmed with a $49 sample CD. David Starfire's Bombay Beatz is just such a CD, laced with massive 909 bass drums, nutty tablas, multiple squeegee sounds and the kind of in-your-face raps that would probably scare a real Indian musician. Starfire may allude to the music of Bombay (currently known as Mumbai) with Bollywood vocals and authentic Indian instruments, but he's really a techno boy slumming through Calcutta, patching a sansuri with a hip hop beat, or percolating tablas with an inane Hollywood rapper. Still, Bombay Beatz has a cool cover. And you can dance to it.

David Starfire
"Indian Fever" (mp3)
from "Bombay Beatz"
(Six Degrees Records)

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