Christopher DeLaurenti

soft gradient

soft gradient is dedicated to Annea Lockwood in gratitude for her friendship and her music. Annea’s gift of a kempul gong recurs quietly in this piece.

Best heard on headphones, soft gradient reflects on the concept of the petit Bardo through multiple, often parallel presences – first through human movement in the soundscape and then by overlapping vestibules of abstract and concrete sound. What might be described as liminal polyphony is demarcated (or decentered) through passageways that are short (such vintage light switches and their tinkling bulbs recorded in France) or ever-elongating inharmonic clouds.

I made all of the field recordings in soft gradient, from a gritty, lo-fi childhood recording of church bells (circa 1977) to recent efforts with binaural microphones. Everything else––instruments (found and traditional), improvised electronics, treated magnetic tape, etc. ––was performed and composed by me from 2022 to 2024 with two exceptions: I borrowed the motorbike and tolling bells from Les deux églises de Montmorillon, 9 pm which I recorded in 1997 (and appears on the Deep Wireless 5 CD released by New Adventures in Sound Art) and “soft gradient (fragment).”

The initial fragment of soft gradient originated as a field recording I made of James Turrell’s Knowing Light exhibit at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery in 2003. Turrell’s chamber contained gradients of lush, spectrally hazy purples that conjured uncertain visual perspectives and disoriented kinesthetic movement. There, space and light extended to infinity due to the ganzfeld effect: The brain compensates for the lack of (or ambiguous) sense data through hallucinations or ever-shifting misperceptions. Put simply, sensory uncertainty ushers you into a liminal state.

I shaped and transformed the Turrell field recording into a one-minute piece, “soft gradient (fragment)” for The Sonics of Art Spaces (2007) a compilation curated for the Stasisfield label by John Kannenberg, the visionary founder of The Museum of Portable Sound.

In the Spring of 2023, I was fortunate to take Barry Truax’s on-line course in Soundscape Composition. Barry’s generous teaching and gorgeous music opened many new directions and techniques for my work, including auto-convolution (i.e. convolving a sound with itself) and terraced, multichannel polyphony. Many sounds in soft gradient were created on or transformed by the pHREAKER, a modular synthesizer designed and built by Jake Joseph at AHC Audio.

soft gradient also marks a personal rebirth – a passage to good health after COVID-19 – and my return to making abstract yet lyrical electronic music with field recordings.

Most of all, I am grateful to my beloved wife Kathleen who makes everything possible and life worth living.

Thank you for listening!

Chris

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