Disquiet

In his effort to expand upon the tuba’s harmonic range, musician Benjamin Klein has paired it with a laptop, using electronic mediation to plumb the deep end as have few others before him. The result is A Hymn to Zoltan Abbassid, on the Luv Sound netlabel (luvsound.org). A rumbling, ruminative piece (MP3), it’s a single track that in nearly 25 minutes (or nearly 34 megabytes) moves from the sort of didgeridoo aura inherent in such a project to a sound far too buried in its own resonance to be comparable to anything but itself. And don’t imagine that this digitally enhanced tuba is merely an excercise in depth for depth’s sake. Klein is just as pleased to explore spacey zones that are more ethereal than they are earthy.

By Marc Weidenbaum