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RER ST4
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"A beautifully recorded and produced cycle of works that combine complexity and precision with rich and unfamiliar timbres. The ensemble pieces amplify and enrich a core piano with various combinations of harmonium, double bass, violin, percussion, Hungarian zither, citara bassa, bowed cymbals, alto clarinet, melodica, sampler and field recordings, all sparsely but powerfully deployed. A deep and powerful music, it is distinguished by both crystalline clarity and cinematic low frequency power; and no fat or redundancy. By combining the edgy presence of acoustic instrumental performance with the width and depth of electroacoustic processing, these pieces confound all genre typing; they are fiendishly complex but they grip like a thriller as they unfold and twist through their ten dense chapters. Rare today, this is a living music. Tickmayer by now can safely be counted amongst the best of that late generation of east block composers who combined a fearsome education with an aesthetic that drew even-handedly on the most austere contemporary music, free jazz, rock and '60s electronics. Above all this is a CD of prodigious performances and great imagination."
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RER ST3
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"A suite of fiendishly complex compositions for mixed real and virtual resources. The real are Bob Drake, Djorge Delibasic, Pegja Milosavljevic and Chris Cutler who, between them, cover electric guitar, bass, drums and virtuoso violin, but it's mainly Stevan here, who plays all kinds of keyboards, strings, double bass and zither, on top of samples and software. In this collection of highly concentrated compositions, we are presented with three thoroughly-composed and finely articulated pieces: 'Concerto Grosso' (for keyboards, string instruments and CPU), 'The Cold Peace Counterpoints,' and 'Five Bagatelles for a Polyhistor.' Those familiar with Tickmayer's earlier recordings, or with the Science Group, will have some idea of what to expect -- a rare co-mingling of high European art music (Tickmayer studied with both György Kurtàg and Louis Andriessen), various East European folk musics, experimental rock, post-rock and computer-assisted electronic composition. These are intense, emotionally and philosophically-driven pieces that demand attention -- and reward it when given."
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RER ST2
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"After a long absence Stevan roars back with this dense and complex work -- a rare example of a truly uncategoriseable music: neither electronic nor acoustic but somewhere in between -- or outside. Taken often at impossible Nancarrow/late Zappa/Ligeti tempi, a cascade of material constantly forms and reforms into different kinds of order: fragments of New Complexity performed with a kind of rock, dance, jazz undercurrent; shards of popular musics dressed in contemporary classical and electroacoustic clothes; debris from the C20 soundworld train-wrecked together as if all possible musics had been crammed into a bag, smithereened, and then somehow self-regenerated into viable but hybrid mutant forms: a kind of Burgess Shale of emergent musical life. However, alien as some of this music may seem at first hearing, it is coherent, through-composed and wholly intentional; nothing is arbitrary and every detail counts. Microtonality, polymetricality, slicing, shuffling and extreme processing sit easily alongside atmospherics, performance, and subtle explorations of timbre and acoustic space. Perhaps it is a monster, but it is a viable monster; a form so unfamiliar that it may take a few listenings just to learn how to listen to it. Order will percolate out, with attention, because it is there. 'The techniques I employed on this CD are heterogeneous in the broadest sense: live playing alongside sequencing, sampling, massive sound processing and some leftovers from previous Science Group recording sessions (mainly those of Chris Cutler and Bob Drake), then re-arrangement and re-orchestration. However, the complete material -- as usual -- is completely written out; even when it sounds quite improvised'."
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