Electrolux came to me under odd circumstances: After a 22 year hiatus from writing music. This is not an attempt to excuse, but merely a statement of fact and I urge you to accept, reject or remain unaffected by this body of work as you would not knowing. But in the very least it may explain its sonic pallet as it resides as an example of what was coined to be the West Coast genre of electronic music.

Electrolux was begun on September 2001 and completed in January of 2002. Although not an attempt to 'paint' an event or object, the opening gesture was composed on Sept. 12, 2001 and obviously influenced by the anarchy of the day -- two bombastic explosions followed by a long decay having a ring similar to the settling of shattered glass.

Technical Notes:

Aside from of the underlining low drone which comes about in its second half, the balance of section 1 was performed on a Yamaha 802. That pedal, as well as most of the other sound in the piece from then on is predominantly that of a Novation SuperNova II rack unit, although the Waldorf Micro Q was used for incidentals and as well for most of the secondary processing of the Nova voices. Interestingly enough, the recapitulation of section A was not performed on the Yamaha, yet is similar in texture.

Electrolux is a hybrid digital/analog piece, but not in the manner in which you might suspect -- with digital information controlling analog instruments. It's the other way around. Though making no sound of their own, throughout this piece a bank of modular analog equipment - some bought and some built - was used as a governing control source for all three digital voicing instruments. A photo of the euipment used can be seen here. Notice the row of analog (see patchcords) whch were used to cpntrol the other (digital) instruments shown,

Theory Notes

The piece is in boilerplate A-B-A-C form, with an over developed end movement. I was not trying to break new ground here, more just stubbornly ignoring the rules and so it may be that Electrolux is actually two pieces lumped together. As unorthodox as it may be, for me the resulting melange works. But I am its mother and because of that overly proud and forgiving. Please judge for yourself.

While the piece is named for a vacuum cleaner, I'm hoping you find it doesn't behave similarly.

Performances

With over 28 performances, Electrolux is without doubt the most widely circulated work I've composed. It received it's premier on April 19th - 20th 2002 at the Periòdic Experimental Music Festival hosted by the CCCB (Center for Cultural Contemporary Art of Barcelona, Spain), an event in which it won. It was as well selected for inclusion in the 2003 SEAMUS National Conference at Arizona State University. Other performances include the University of North Texas, the SCREAM series at The California Institute of the Arts, the 12th annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne as well as numerous radio broadcasts including KCSN Los Angeles, CKCU Ottawa, WOBC Oberlin and Resonance FM London.