Travis Laplante is an American saxophonist who is, among other things, part of the duo Subtle Degrees with Gerald Cleaver. Here is a stunning and extremely seductive album of string quartets he wrote and which are performed with force and conviction by the New York ensemble JACK Quartet.
The quartets are partly written according to the principle of just intonation, a system in which, in principle, all intervals, particularly all consonances, are just. That is to say, they correspond in theory to simple frequency ratios, 2/1 for the octave, 3/2 for the fifth, 4/3 for the fourth, 5/4 for the major third, and 6/5 for the minor third. It is difficult to imagine the sonic nature of the result from an academic definition. Let’s say that at times, it’s a bit like the music seems to subtly distort, like an audio cassette whose rotation speed slows down or speeds up. Parallels with Arabic and Indian microtonal music can be drawn, but remain quite off the point.
For his part, Laplante sparingly calibrates his writing so that the auditory “oddities” are scattered throughout his scores, which are generally consonant in a “traditional” manner, and in the post-minimalist style.
The result is a frankly attractive universe that, from time to time, surprises us and seems to elude our attention, or wants to deceive our senses. A sonic equivalent of the Bullet Time effect from The Matrix, maybe? Or, at other times, as if parts of two perfectly tonal melodies but offset by a semitone, overlapped.
What is most convincing about Laplante’s approach is that he doesn’t abuse this system. He clearly wants to write good and beautiful music, not a cerebral exercise to highlight a concept. In this sense, it is quite successful.
An album that amazes the mind while nourishing the heart. Quite mesmerizing.
