Pause

Jonathan Nangle is a Dublin composer whose work explores many diverse fields - from notated acoustic and electro-acoustic compositions, through live and spatially distributed electronics, to video, sound installation, and electronic improvisation. His transcendent music for strings comes to life in these luminous recordings by Crash Ensemble, Ireland's leading ensemble for adventurous new music. This is music of serene focus; often fragile, always intricately woven. In "Where Distant City Lights Flicker On Half-Frozen Ponds", Nangle enhances a solo violin with electronic resonators which subtly color the musical material like a heat shimmer. "My Heart Stopped A Thousand Beats" is a slow ritual for viola and cello, unfurling into a series of fragments. The mercurial title track "Pause" was inspired by the idea of data glitches in both music and visual media. A snippet of music by early twentieth-century American composer Charles Ives is processed, rearranged, and deliberately glitched, serving as a springboard to new material. The two "Fragment" tracks also featured on the album are short improvisations on passages that occur within "Pause" - reflections of fleeting images. The album closes with "Tessellate" for cello and electronics, inspired by the phenomena of tessellations, where a shape is repeated over and over again, covering a plane without any gaps. RIYL: Kronos Quartet, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Kevin Volans, David Lang, Olafur Arnalds, Nico Muhly.