Friday Five: Dr. Pete Larson, Varient/Echospace, Verzerren, Jason Adam Voss, AGN7 label

MUSIC FRIDAY FIVE

Art for the albums and singles featured in this week's Friday Five.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week features improvised synths by Dr. Pete Larson, ambient by Varient/Echospace, modular tunes by Verzerren, math music by Jason Adam Voss, and drum 'n' bass remixes on the AGN7 label.

 

Dr. Pete Larson, Live at Trinosophes
When not ripping on the nyatiti—a Kenyan folk instrument—in psychedelic rock trios, Ann Arbor's Dr. Peter Larson has been exploring synths in a variety of live performances over the past couple of years. This 45-minute ambient-drone set was recorded as part of the Detroit club's Synth Tuesday series, which features a local artist playing improvised synthesizer music.

 

Variant, Echospace [Sounds] Collection
Ann Arbor's Stephen Hitchell—aka Echospace—turned over 15 years of modular experiments to Variant—aka Stephen Hitchell—for four hours of remixes. The sound of deep outer-space ambiance.

 

Verzerren, "Motorcar Hegemony Resistance," "Frozen Falling Sky," FF D8 FF E0 EP
Ann Arbor's Joe Bauer continues his experiments in modular synthesis with two new singles that show polar opposite results: "Motorcar Hegemony Resistance" is hard-edged glitch-funk and the ambient "Frozen Falling Sky" mimics the oncoming vibe of an incoming winter storm. The FF D8 FF E0 EP is a reissue of a 2004 release where Bauer used a Gameboy and Korg ESX-1 synth to create the four chiptune jams.

 

Jason Adam Voss, Primes to 31
You've heard of math rock; Primes to 31 is math music. Hot on the heels of his recent New Directions in Subharmonic Piano album, Ypsi's Jason Adam Voss once again explores programmed keyboards using just intonation. I am horrible at math, so I'll let him take it from here:

subharmonic pulse piano music in which each note pulses at regular time interval based on its subharmonic number. In this case they are 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31 and their octave multiples of 2, 4 and 8.

each interval between notes is unique to that pair of notes and recurs at the LCM of the subharmonic numbers. for example, the 3/2 between 24 and 16 happens the most frequently at every 48 beats and the 31/29 happens least frequently at every 899 beats.

the duration is arbitrarily set to album length - the complete cycle would take about 60,000 years to line back up and start over again. listening to smaller sections is enjoyable and there is no big payoff for listening from beginning to end.

 

Heatwave, Echoes Remixes EP
Ypsi's premier—and maybe only—drum 'n' bass label AGN7 farmed out tracks from 2021's Echoes album by Heatwave for the remix treatment by Ahmad, Aikanã (Akinsa), Cloak & Dagger, dreadmaul, Fuj, No_Name, SPKTRM & OTO.


Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.