Schumacher, Michael J. / Room Pieces
Album: Room Pieces   Collection:General
Artist:Schumacher, Michael J.   Added:Oct 2003
Label:Xi Records  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2003-10-19 Pull Date: 2003-12-21
Week Ending: Nov 16
Airplays: 1

Recent Airplay
1. Nov 11, 2003: The Digital/Analog War
Room Piece Xi

Album Review
Gabe
Reviewed 2003-10-14
Minimalist pieces based loosely on the formula “A sound came from over there, stopped, then another sound came from somewhere else” and also on the the works of Cage, Lucier, and software engineers. CD 2 has shorter and more dynamic pieces than CD 1.

CD 1
1. 75-minute, low-mixed, and very sparse piece featuring minimalistic sound bits separated widely by large patches of blank space; at about the 40-minute mark, the electronic squelches that comprise the non-blank space become aggressive and continuous but things soon lapse back into slow and low; technical description from the liner notes: “the various haunting sounds … recur according to a complex set of algorithms that control the random generation of timings for the articulation of the pitches by the various instruments”; in other words, like watching math formulae dry

CD 2
1. Two samples of violin and one of percussion are manipulated by software; in part one (appx. ‘til 8 minutes), the sound, being mostly the violin samples, is busy, heavily layered, and sort of thrilling; after some 15 seconds of silence, fuzzed gong samples that overlap, resonate, and otherwise mess with each other move in; eventually, the heavily processes gong sample meets up with the heavily processed violin samples in a big hoedown … well, maybe “hoedown” is not the right word
2. Restrained, soothing, shimmering metallic textures
3. Excellent spaceship ambience – drone with sine waves creating some vague rhythm
4. Tiny bits of guitar spar with synthesizer chirps in a pretty static composition

Track Listing
1. Room Piece Xi   3. Still
2. Piece in 3 Parts   4. Untitled
  5. Still