At close to eight minutes in length, “Tenuto” by Benjamin Dauer both seems to change and stay the same during its somewhat extended droning. The piece drones, but it isn’t a drone, at least to the extent that most drones aren’t drones, which is to say the extent to which, after just a small bit of observation, it becomes evident that there is an enormous amount of activity happening inside the drone.
The term “drone” is like a sausage wrapper, lending a sense of uniformity to what is, in fact, often a chaotic mix of constituent parts. Here that chaos includes a seeming orchestra, high notes like a flute solo, fluttering activity like a string section, a deep probing noise like nothing so much as an organ.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/benjamindauer. More on Dauer, who is based in Washington, DC, at benjamindauer.net.