This work develops Cat’s work with bass frequencies, drone, glissandi and mobile scores. At certain points in the score, the instrument is sampled, pitched down using an octave pedal usually applied for electric guitars, and played through a bass amplifier. A similar process happens with distortion. The performer reads the score in an automated player that interrupts and reverses the order of different players randomly, indicating changes in texture and effect. This piece began as a commission for trumpet player Callum G’Froerer, and has a flexible instrumentation – its first performance was for four bass clarinets, but it has also been performed with bass clarinet and viola, and trumpet and electronics. To perform this work, you need to read it on an ipad, using the Decibel ScorePlayer, which contains the score.
Premiere: Shock of the New, Spectrum project Space, WA March 2012 Other Performances: Decibel, Small Things, State Theatre Centre, WA, May 2012 Peter Knight and Lindsay Vickery, Perditempo, Naples, Italy September 2012 Decibel, The Now Now, Red Rattler, Sydney, January 2013. Callum G'Froerer, ANAM, Melbourne, November 2013.
Review Liminum collides electronic and instrumental sounds, as if in a centrifuge. Here instruments imitate a distorted electronic sound, as if taken from a horror film soundtrack. There is a dark ambience at work here, as the instruments are required to remain at the pace and tone of the sound, never rising or falling to the registers they are capable of. This is Decibel at their most interesting, as electronic and instrumental sounds flesh themselves out in relation to each other, here beginning to sound positively industrial as a violin twists through the amplification of pedals.” Darren Jorgenson, Realtime. 110
" with a quick stomp on an effects pedal the strings sound like High Rise, or some equally epic Japanese power trio on PSF." Oliver Liang, Cyclic Defrost.
‘sophisticated technology in the service of surprise’ Andy Hamilton, The Wire, 2013,