Jon Rose — Aeolian Tendency

Jon Rose has been building aeolian instruments since the late 1970s, which are unique stringed objects that are articulated by the unpredictable movement of the wind. Rose’s latest work, Aeolian Tendency, features two such instruments – the Monolith (2021) and the Tube (2022) – whose rather prosaic monikers belie their whacko sonic characteristics. Each Aeolian contraption is featured on two, long tracks respectively (4 in total), and one really needs to pay attention to distinguish their unique sonic characters. If all of this preamble were not available, you might be convinced that Rose went to outer space briefly, and took a good field recorder with him.

The otherworldliness and automatism of Rose’s chosen contrivances is a thing of pure, drone-y goodness, and the awareness that these aeolian instruments are merely excited by the omnipresent movement of air, only adds to their mystery and charm. Constructing such an apparatus puts Rose in a long line of practitioners who have embraced the aleatoric, or merely wanted to problematize their own authorship over a particular work. Well, using a stringed medium to filter and process the wind certainly qualifies as a tool worthy of more than mere porch ornamentation, and I cannot help but think that Rose’s delicate manipulation of the air is couched in a genealogy of sonic processing that traverses both electro and acoustic traditions. Aeolian Tendency would sit at home equally in any New Music atonality or digital microtonal composition.

Fans of quiet, slow, moving drones in the higher frequency registers will likely enjoy much of what Aeolian Tendency has to offer, as will those who embrace the inherent unpredictability of the self-made instrument. For more info