- Release Info -------------------------------------------------------------- -
ARTiST... David Stutz
ALBUM.... IOLETmusic from the world of ANATHEM
LABEL.... cdbaby
CAT.NUM.. n/a
GENRE.... Ambient
RiP.DATE. Apr-04-2009
SOURCE... CDDA
PLAYTIME. 57:49 min
SIZE..... 72,6 MB
ENCODER.. LAME v3.97 -V2 --vbr-new
TRACKS... 08
QUALiTY.. VBRkbps / 44.1kHz / Joint-Stereo
- Track List ---------------------------------------------------------------- -
[01] approximating pi [06:56]
[02] thousander chant [05:32]
[03] proof (using finite projective geometry) [04:08]
[04] cellular automata [05:33]
[05] mascheroni circles [13:52]
[06] quantum spin network [05:53]
[07] sixteen color prime generating automation [11:26]
[08] deriving the quadratic equation [04:29]
- Release Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- -
"Spooky, wonderful music"
~ Corey Doctorow, [BoingBoing.net]
"It sounds like the neo-Gregorian chanting that accompanies ritual baby
sacrifice in horror films.ö
~ Steven Levy [in Wired]
"Some weird shit"
~ Al Billings, [In Pursuit of Mysteries, arcanology.com]
"Suitably ethereal"
~ Publishers Weekly
Background for "IOLET::Music from the World of Anathem":
The music on this disc was composed to accompany Neal Stephenson's novel
Anathem. After hearing a short verbal description of the core ideas for the
book during a dinnertime conversation in 2006, I was completely drawn into the
world that Neal was creating. I began to draft musical ideas to match some of
the imaginary musical traditions that he had described, and Neal supplied draft
copies of his book to me as it took shape. The experimental vocal music that
you hear on this disc is the result.
It was clear from day one that the characters in the book possess not one, but
many musical traditions, each forged over thousands of years of isolation, and
each strangely similar to, yet exotically removed from, the monastic traditions
of Earth. As an active performer of Earthly
vocal music, as a lapsed musicologist, and especially as a composer, I was
excited by the possibilities opened up by Neal's imagination: somber music to
celebrate the mysteries of philosophy and mathematics within the soaring stone
walls of a cloister; simple songs to ease the mathematical drudgery of
verifying theories; inward meditations upon
truth and beauty; and finally, fiendishly difficult musical games designed to
hone intellectual prowess.
All profits from the sale of this record will be donated to the Long Now
Foundation, whose project ideas had a seminal role in the genesis of Anathem.
-- David Stutz
Some reviews for "IOLET::Music from the World of Anathem":
"If Anathem often reads like a delirious mashup of Douglas HofstadterÆs G÷del,
Escher, Bach, Umberto EcoÆs The Name of the Rose, and Isaac AsimovÆs
Foundation, then the music (composed by David Stutz), doesnÆt so much
underscore HofstadterÆs Bach as it reaches further back, to the origins of
polyphony, when the magic of two near but separate voices ù separate just to
the point of beating ù was, like any sufficiently advanced science, still
something close to magic [...] The sound is quite pure, with rarified tonal
color, and compositional attention to very small shifts in notes. But the point
of the composition isnÆt so much the notes themselves, but how they overlap
when sung by multiple voices."
~ disquiet.com
"Iolet" offers ostensible hymns of the avout. These range from the hesitant,
John Cage-like "Approximating Pi" and the digeridooish grumbling of "Quantum
Spin Network" through the beautifully ordered near-dissonances of "Cellular
Automata" and the dramatic harmonies of "Deriving the Quadratic Equation."
~ Seattle Times
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