Composer David Lang came to prominence as one of the organizers of the Bang on a Can festival, a musical event organized around postmodern contemporary ideas with feet in minimalism, rock, jazz, and other forms. This disc of his own compositions ranges widely, sometimes ingratiating, sometimes annoying, but generally of interest. The title track, far from having any overt associations with the Hendrix classic, is a self-referential piece involving the plight of a new music listener who gets banged on the head and the ...
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Composer David Lang came to prominence as one of the organizers of the Bang on a Can festival, a musical event organized around postmodern contemporary ideas with feet in minimalism, rock, jazz, and other forms. This disc of his own compositions ranges widely, sometimes ingratiating, sometimes annoying, but generally of interest. The title track, far from having any overt associations with the Hendrix classic, is a self-referential piece involving the plight of a new music listener who gets banged on the head and the hallucinatory scenes this accident creates. Musically, it tends toward the abrupt, harsh minimalism of Louis Andriessen, a Dutch composer and one of the patron saints of the Bang on a Can festival. Its stabs at humor and wackiness wear thin, however. More successful is a piano duo, "Orpheus Over and Under," here performed by Double Edge (Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles). A keening evocation of loss, its shimmering, unrelenting tremolos in the higher registers are striking and evocative. "Spud," for chamber orchestra, is a bit bland, but the closing "Illumination Rounds," beautifully performed by Ursula Oppens on piano and Rolf Schulte on violin, ends the disc in stirring fashion. Using the imagery of tracer bullets used during the Vietnam conflict, Lang created aural equivalents between the instruments as they careen across the musical space, leaving echoing shards behind them. The interplay of the duo and sheer drive of the music are breathtaking and viscerally fascinating. Are You Experienced? is a mixed bag both thematically and qualitatively, but worth hearing overall. ~ Brian Olewnick, Rovi
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