Andrew Staniland – The Laws of Nature

What if I told you that your brainwaves could be translated into sounds and musical compositions? This is what happens with The Laws of Nature (the album’s title track) and Dancer Portraits, two six-movement suites created with a device called JADE, invented by Staniland with the help of academics from the MEARL, the Memorial ElectroAcoustic Research Lab, based in Newfoundland. For Dancer Portraits, Staniland collaborated closely with dancers connected to a device that read their brain activity during a choreography. He then collected the neural information and transformed it into MIDI files and audio format. The result is astonishing, like a mix between traditional electro, ambient, and musique concrète. What makes Dancer Portraits particularly attractive is the luminous, optimistic, and even solar nature of the harmonic/sound paste manipulated by the Newfoundland composer. What could have been a hyper-conceptual and cold creation turns out to be seductive and playful. Maybe the joy dancers feel when doing their thing is contagious into the music? Superb.

The Laws of Nature is a compositional expansion of the material collected in Dancer Portraits by Staniland. Here, he plunges us into a more experimental, sometimes gritty world, although the infectious energy remains present. The “composed” and contemporary nature of the music, as well as the presence of Staniland behind its birth and flourishing, are felt more strongly. That being said, we lose nothing from the stimulating effect music has on our attention, as ideas flow, or sometimes overlap, in an unusual and original way.

Staniland is an excellent composer for traditional (acoustic) classical instruments. His genius in electronic music is one of the happiest surprises in recent avant-garde music.