KRAKEN
Kraken (2024) is an exploration of thalassophobia-as-sublime; realized through recorded manipulations of unplugged electric guitar with modular synthesizer, glitchy polyrhythms, and musical gestures reminiscent of extreme metal music. Small gestures are stretched, expanded, and combined with oppressive low frequencies to convey the sense of depth, pressure, and darkness I associate with the deep ocean.
Kraken has been presented at SEAMUS, NYCEMF, Ignite the Arts Festival, Third Practice Festival, Spaceout International Ambisonics Festival, and Ars Electronica. Upcoming performances include UGA’s New Music Festival and Electronic Music Midwest.
GAUNTLET
for two electric guitars, Max, and Quad Cortex.
Gauntlet (2024) is a piece for two electric guitars and electronics conceived as an obstacle course; each section is loosely based around common guitar warmups and practice techniques taken to (sometimes ridiculous) extremes. A Max patch generates individual click tracks for each player—these accelerate and decelerate as the piece progresses, moving in and out of sync with each other. The patch also controls the effects processing of each guitar; players will have to contend not just with a changing click track, but with unexpected changes in timbre which become progressively more disruptive. Performers navigate through six sections in this manner, all of which include a set of performance instructions outlining a pool of material to be used in that section as well as how to interact with the click.
premiered by LINÜ (Jiji Kim and Gulli Björnsson), February 2025.
THIS USED TO BE SOMETHING ELSE (II)
for saxophone, percussion, and performative electronics
Phonetic text scores originally created for exploratory drone improvisation using electric guitar, ebow, and synthesizers are reimagined for saxophone and percussion. Performers interpret short fragments of text as sound, ranging from recognizable vowels to abstract groups of letters, creating textures that offer a different perspective on the idea of the drone.
Premiered by Popebama (www.popebama.com) at the University of Virginia, February 2023. Subsequent performances at SPLICE Institute and Yarn/Wire Institute in June 2023.
Erin Rogers: saxophone + electronics | Dennis Sullivan: percussion + electronics
More examples of my recent compositions, including acousmatic and performance works, can be found here.