Tracklist
 01 | Ensayo sobre Música Esporádica, No. 1: Esquizofrenia sobre un Vals Postmoderno | 7:59  |
| 02 | Ensayo sobre Música Esporádica, No. 2: El Loco y la Niña | 7:04 |
| 03 | Ensayo sobre Música Esporádica, No. 3: Dibujando Infinitos Ciclos que Van y Vienen en el Tiempo (Philip Glass cover) | 10:18 |
Previews
- No. 1: Esquizofrenia sobre un Vals Postmoderno (excerpt) 1:02
- No. 2: El Loco y la Niña (excerpt) 0:45
- No. 3: Dibujando Infinitos Ciclos que Van y Vienen en el Tiempo (Philip Glass cover) (excerpt) 0:51
Details
First release in January 2000. My debut.
This first EP features three pieces for solo piano written and recorded between November and December of 1999 based on my own «sporadic» techniques of composition.
«Sporadic music» was the general term that I used back then to refer to a set of compositional techniques I had in mind as a kind of “new language or aesthetic of making music”, borrowing ideas from various avant-garde contexts (mainly Minimalism and Expressionism) as well as my own inventions. The basic ideas was to treat all these techniques as a sort of “composition map, geometry or arithmetic” through which one or more musical elements (especially rhythm, melody, tonality, modality and structure) would undergo a constant process of transmutation and instability –constantly changing through harmonic relations, games of addition and subtraction, retrograde expositions of previous schemes, logical transformations, sudden breaks, and a few other crazy things like that…
At the time I was very focused on the piano and on experimental theorical composition of music on paper –it was during my college years–, and I spent months thinking about all these ideas. So, this EP was the culmination to real life of all this.
The composition based on «sporadic music» is a very creative, intuitive and unpredictable process: you invent rules, follow them, then break them completely to invent new rules, you blend them, and so on… The result is minimalist and reiterative, expressionist and unstable, sometimes surreal, always interesting! Since then, I’ve never gone so deeply back into this style of composition, but it has remained a recurring element in my music. You can find traces of it in later works as: «Las Cinco Construcciones de Babel» (2000), «Jazz en Clave Mínimo-Andalusí» (2002), «The Great Old One» (2009, Cautiva project) or «Ramifications Dans L’Escalier Du Diable» (2011, György Ligeti cover).
In the first track (Essay No. 1), the “sporadic” ideas were not only applied to usual musical elements (melody, rhythm, measure, etc.) but also to the compositional style itself. So, the first section is minimalist, the second section is chromatist, then expressionist, and son, finishing with pure drone music.
In the second track (Essay No. 2, translated as “The Madman and the Little Girl”), the ideas of sporadic composition run along two interdependent musical lines (the “left hand – the madman” and the “right hand – the little girl”), with the sporadic speech based especially on the musical development of short motives and themes. «El Loco y la Niña» –based on movements of minor chords and featuring a very complex and interesting micro-structure– is a dramatic and hyperactive composition, a mix of violence (the madman) and very delicate care (the little girl)…
Finally, the third track (Essay No. 3) is a cover of Philip Glass’ «Modern Love Waltz» (1978). Reconstructed and recorded on December 28, 1999, it’s a “sporadic, retrograde and infinite” version of Glass’ composition. The title of the track (translated as “Drawing Infinite Cycles Going and Coming in Time”) describes very well what is happening in the music. First, you hear the piece “going” in its direct or normal sense (an adaptation of the main original exposition, until 2:30 minute approx.); next, you hear the piece “coming” in retrograde or inverse sense (backwards), returning so to the beginning of the musical speech… for starting and ending again and again indefinitely! The recording here presents two complete expositions (going-coming and going-coming again), but it can be looped as many times as you like, thus approaching the original concept of the essay/study.
This EP was originally released –together «Lluvia de Mayo» (CD-S, 2000)– as a promo preview of an upcoming album that was supposed to be released in summer of 2000 under the title of «Tres Piezas de Tres» (literally “Three Pieces of Three”: these three sporadic-music essays, three romantic poems and the piece in three movements «Orgía Tonal en Partitura de Cristal»). In the end that album was never released. Don’t ask why!
Cover artwork by Sara Valiente. Sleeve design by José Travieso.
This EP was remastered in 2008.
You can download and get this EP on Bandcamp.
