Ritual Variations by Robert Takahashi Crouch

My last album opens with a piece called A Ritual. I think of this piece as a somewhat aggressive, long-form meditation on intimacy and ecstasy. There’s a reason I think about it like this.

The 19 minutes that comprise the track were taken from a much longer recording; a 2 hour improvisation I performed privately for my partner, Yann Novak. Performance is always a personal experience, even when offered communally, but this particular performance was very much about a shared moment, in an environment that foregrounded the personal. The low, undulating frequencies in the piece underscore a sense of the physical for me. I’d like to think it’s a work that dwells on upon the vibrational qualities of sound, and offers a respite within its mesh of rich harmonics, pushing a listener towards the ecstatic.

For Ritual Variations, I reached out to friends and artists whose work I respect and admire for various reasons. I gave these seven artists, including my partner, access to the original 2 hour recording and invited them to create new compositions using it as source material. It was a chance for them to also consider the private, intimate nature of the recording itself.

Robert Takahashi Novak is an artist and curator whose work encompasses sound, performance, and technology. As an artist, he locates his work with the intersection of post-phenomenological listening practices, conceptual sound art, and contemporary electronic music. Similarly, Crouch’s curatorial work focuses on the overlapping disciplines of sound, technology, movement, and performance.

robert.takahashinovak.com
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