Last month’s issue of The Wire featured reviews of two new Duane Pitre releases, neither of which was this one; he’s been busy. ED09 continues his work in large-scale orchestral drones with a 43 minute piece over two sides of vinyl (or two 20 minute tracks on promo CDR).
There’s something of Tony Conrad in the foregrounded violin, which in its shifting tone also brings to mind an experimental kind of folk-fiddling. Moving from an amorphous ‘tune up’ din, Pitre gradually adds voices, increasing in density and volume. There’s little melodic development but there is constant change: an ebb and flow of thickness, octaves shifting as different instruments are foregrounded, others trailing off or dropping out. Bows slide and dissonant tone clusters emerge, reminiscent of Gloria Coates. It becomes a kind of independent creature, snaking, expanding and contracting with a life of its own, the individual parts of which are difficult to discern. Movement and change is difficult to pinpoint, but Pitre moves us from gaseous hiss to treacle with impressive fluidity, the vague tinker from players betraying its origin in live performance.
Joshua Meggitt
