TRISTAN PERICH ENSEMBLE - OPEN SYMMETRY

Released: 21/06/2024

The New York-based composer Tristan Perich’s first release on the estimable Erased Tapes is a 50-minute work for three vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics, performed by the dynamic French group Ensemble 0. But what is 1-bit music, I hear you murmur. Well, I’m glad you asked. With 1-bit sound, the audio waveform is built from the binary language of 1s and 0s, in contrast to the perpetual stride towards higher fidelity with 16- or 24-bit, and most recently 32-bit audio. The result is a square-shaped tone, which Perich either presents on its own (as in his circuit albums or solo shows), or blends with classical instrumentation, as with the excellent Open Symmetry. 

While Perich’s techno-primitivism is a fascinating act of resistance against the often flattening nature of high-fidelity sound – the aural equivalent to the unsettling hyper-reality of high-definition screens – all of that is secondary to the pleasure his music brings to the listener. Containing a hypnotic verticality that is found in the best work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and redolent of the glistening, dialectical counterpoint of Laurie Spiegel’s The Expanding Universe, Open Symmetry is simply one of the best, and best sounding works of classical minimalism that you will likely ever hear.