Kristina Warren, from Providence, Rhode Island, is a sound artist with a research and avant-garde bent, but whose proximity with a wider audience means that her explorations are supported by a catchy, “trance-inducive” pulse. Three Rivulets is an audiovisual work. It is constructed using a variety of audio and visual slow oscillators. Each of the three movements is conceptualized according to a metaphorical belonging (tentatively referenced in the music with more or less comprehensible embodiment) to as many geometric shapes, the rectangle, the triangle and the circle. Here, of course, is the audio only aspect of the project
The composer is in a better position than I to explain the nature of the ensemble’s geometric subdivisions:
Three Rivulets begins with “Rectangles,” whose initial primordial bass resonance and shrieking feedback soon coalesce into driving rhythms that are grounded but not quite metered. “Rectangles” ends at sunset, held by a reflective, machinic resonance. Next, “Triangles” is insistent and ritualistic, its dense polyrhythms evoking an absorbing inner mindscape. It dissolves in a kind of purposeful exhalation, underscored by the nervous system’s rapid thrum. Finally, “Circles” begins and ends by merging darkness and light: which is the background and which the foreground? This luminescence bookends an uncanny tour through a futuristic DNA factory, observed by many eyes who later seem to be wearing ugly Christmas sweaters. Though uniformly at 80bpm and almost wholly in a neon-sunset color palette, Three Rivulets is visually and sonically expansive. It seamlessly merges human and machine, beautiful and ugly, retro and futuristic: a curiously inviting audiovisual bath.
The real question is whether it’s good or not, and whether we want to listen to it again. I say yes, for the reason that Warren, as an electro composer, has one quality: she knows how to create disparate superimposed textures that give her constructions a chamber-like quality, a finesse of timbral traces that stimulate listening. Almost like detailed counterpoint. The underlying pulsation, never explicit as a “beat”, but continually sustained and perceptible, creates, as indicated at the beginning of the article, an atmosphere of hypnotic, kaleidoscopic trance. That said, of the three movements, Triangles is the most static in terms of musical verticality. Harmony”, ‘melody’, etc., are particularly absent, erased by an almost exclusive focus on the horizontality of a linearly stretching pulse. A dearth of colorization and “melodic” personality that’s a little wearying. On the contrary, Circles returns partially to an environment of abundance, after a slow introduction of atmospheric greyness. It ends that way too, but nevertheless seems more organic and ‘’narrated’’ than Triangles.
For my part, after the first listen, I found myself wanting to listen to the whole thing several times over, not just for the purposes of this review, but because the immersion in this bath of sound is, by and large, pleasant. If you like electronic music that’s both seductive and erudite, this is a good album for you.
