Top tracks
Listeners also bought
Other Experimental albums
Other World Fusion albums
Put your hands on the remote! browse music »LightCycles by Gordon Green
awesome deal
view larger image
fave it Experimental | World Fusion
21 tracks | 71 minutes
Released Jun 2003
on JRI Recordings
Click
for a 30-second preview. All tracks are 192kbps high fidelity sound quality. Protected WMA $0.77 or unprotected MP3 $0.88.
listen album 30sec. shuffle buy CD review album promote album
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:06 Incantation lyrics BUY MP3 04:06 Incantation lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:06 Incantation
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:48 Flickering lyrics BUY MP3 03:48 Flickering lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:48 Flickering
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:17 Spirals lyrics BUY MP3 03:17 Spirals lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:17 Spirals
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:48 Sails lyrics BUY MP3 03:48 Sails lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:48 Sails
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:36 Vortex lyrics BUY MP3 03:36 Vortex lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:36 Vortex
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:47 Shadows lyrics BUY MP3 04:47 Shadows lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:47 Shadows
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:02 Tracery lyrics BUY MP3 03:02 Tracery lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:02 Tracery
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 01:36 Lightwheels lyrics BUY MP3 01:36 Lightwheels lyrics "GIFT MP3" 01:36 Lightwheels
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:51 Apparitions lyrics BUY MP3 04:51 Apparitions lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:51 Apparitions
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:04 Chiaroscuro lyrics BUY MP3 02:04 Chiaroscuro lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:04 Chiaroscuro
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:58 Stars lyrics BUY MP3 05:58 Stars lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:58 Stars
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:05 Lightsong lyrics BUY MP3 05:05 Lightsong lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:05 Lightsong
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 01:16 Waltz lyrics BUY MP3 01:16 Waltz lyrics "GIFT MP3" 01:16 Waltz
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:07 Wind lyrics BUY MP3 02:07 Wind lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:07 Wind
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 00:56 Birds lyrics BUY MP3 00:56 Birds lyrics "GIFT MP3" 00:56 Birds
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:01 Ballad lyrics BUY MP3 02:01 Ballad lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:01 Ballad
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 01:46 Swing lyrics BUY MP3 01:46 Swing lyrics "GIFT MP3" 01:46 Swing
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:13 Stirrings lyrics BUY MP3 04:13 Stirrings lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:13 Stirrings
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:13 Procession lyrics BUY MP3 04:13 Procession lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:13 Procession
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:57 Flying lyrics BUY MP3 03:57 Flying lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:57 Flying
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:14 The Ocean lyrics BUY MP3 05:14 The Ocean lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:14 The Ocean
Awesome deal! When you buy this album for $8.88 you get 21 tracks for less than $0.42 each
Awesome deal! When you buy this album for $7.77 you get 21 tracks for less than $0.37 each
A collection of contrasting evocative instrumental compositions, scored for anything from multiple player pianos to tuned drums to string orchestra to digeridoo and landing jets.
Bio / Background
Gordon Green is a talented, emerging New York-based composer. His most recent CD bills itself as being "electronic music," and while this is true enough in the sense that synthesizer sounds (as well as samples) are utilized, this is not, to paraphrase the old car commercial, your father's electronic music. For one thing, Green's work presents an appealingly eclectic mix of styles incorporating anything and everything from organ- scored plainchant to high Romanticism to jazz inflections to Conlon Nancarrow "superpiano" idioms to "downtown scene" New York touches. For another, the composer's sonic world contains clear references to acoustic instrument timbres and sounds from nature. Anyone who thinks this music is a lazy, MIDI-based "substitute for the real thing," though, isn't listening very closely.
↓ more ↓Green embellishes his acoustic- instrument-oriented sounds with obviously electronic-derived filigree, thereby obtaining a strange, but telling timbre sheen impossible to achieve through the use of live players. The effect somehow suggests music derived from a shimmering, mildly automatized, slightly surreal parallel universe.
All the works on this disk were inspired by non-musical works of art (choreography, driftwood sculpture, video art) and are meant to be danced to. The music is simultaneously wonderfully evocative and energetically rhythmic, a mix which would seem to assure its success for such a purpose.
LightCycles is the CD's magnum opus. In a certain way, this twelve-movement composition can be seen as updating the concept of the 19th century descriptive or travelogue suite. Each movement is an elicitory, self-contained character piece that usually articulates one mood or approach, though more than one influence may be combined. Space permits listing only a few examples: "Spirals" suggests an electronic analogue to African drumming, "Tracery" combines jazzy combo sounds and Indian tabla timbres, "Flickering" sounds like dozens of music boxes fighting each other for prominence, "Sails" (an electronic piano based piece) manages to mix influences from Chopin, process music, and Joni Mitchell and sound perfectly natural. Most importantly, none of these wildly contrasted musics sound out of place next to each other; the collection hangs together surprisingly well, helped in part by the "recapitulatory" nature of the last two movements. The music unfolds slowly, in an improvisational yet logical way, combining the best aspects of these seemingly contradictory approaches. It's a splendid listen.
By contrast, Variations can ultimately trace its roots back to the aphoristic piano miniatures of Schumann and Debussy. These fivelittle movements are jewel-box charmers, evoking fractured jazz, funhouse waltzes, ersatz Impressionist harp music, and much more.
The last work, Novella, consists of four seemingly capriciously constructed movements that follow one another without pause. This reviewer was initially perplexed, but a second hearing revealed the piece's special accomplishment. The opening plainchant melody is subtly varied and transformed throughout the composition, thereby achieving maximum contrast from limited material. This fine, challenging work does not divulge its secrets readily, but just as one needs to pry open an oyster to extract a pearl, this piece rewards those listeners who give it a fair shake.
In summation, this is terrifically good CD, a highly recommended purchase. Or to quote another old advertising slogan, "No home should be without one."
- David Cleary, New Music Connoisseur, 21st Century Music
↑ less ↑






