Other Music (US)

When Simon and Garfunkel sang of the “Sounds Of Silence,” what they meant was that even in the constant noise and chaos of the U.S. of 1968 stood moments of tranquility. 30-year-old radical electronic minimalist Taylor Deupree also understands how silence can hold a sense of the serene, but how, when it is interrupted, even with the wings of a hummingbird, the effect can be startling. For the uninitiated, Occur, may sound like nothing more than long periods of sonic absence followed by sporadic sounds made under a microscope. Track No. 4 (the pieces are not titled) isn’t going to be on the next Clicks & Cuts compilation, though it does have elective affinities with the approach of some of the artists on those compilations. Like his peers Ryoji Ikeda, Kim Cascone, Richard Chartier, and Carsten Nicolai, Deupree is very much a sound scientist, measuring by the width of a hair each sound, its resonances and consequences. [TH]