Meehan/Perkins Duo – Tristan Perich: Parallels (2015)

Composer and plastic artist Tristan Perich has created four separate, yet somehow still distinct landscapes here on Compositions (via his imprint Physical Editions). With release dates strung across this calendar year, each piece will explore what's surely become his one-man realm: 1-bit electro-acoustic brilliance. Perich's maiden installment, Parallels, was recorded at Octaven Studios and Shirk Studios, and is scored for tuned triangles, hi-hats and his patent 1-bit (albeit 4-channels) electronics--both commissioned and expertly performed here by Meehan/Perkins Duo.


Like its whole, Parallels, in part is curio of dichotomy: an intently percussive de rerum natura of pitched vs. unpitched. You'll no doubt revel in its sounding symbiosis. Tone begat noise; noise becoming tone. Perhaps it's the innate duality of 1-bit sound--one or zero, on or off--but, spatially, the piece winds in/out of focus that's hardly bicameral. Laid out with Swiss precision into seven sections all through-composed on the poster-sized print of the entire score enclosed in the physical copy, I loved what happens at 3:10. Same precision, higher pitched, the tonal shift is a near epiphany.