Patrick Grant — FIELDS AMAZE and other sTRANGE music

Patrick Grant is an American composer who lives in New York and composes music in an experimental style close to minimalism the likes of  Philip Glass and John Cage, with a more creativity leaning to his compositions. Patrick is also very closely involved in producing live concerts and installations of both other composers and his own performances.  He’s also a professor in the Film School at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Unfortunately, I could not find exhaustive information about the number of works written by Mr Grant. Therefore, I shall confine myself available to me information. Patrick recorded his first album FIELDS AMAZE in 1997 in Philip Glass's studio and released it on his own label Strange Music in 1998. Then followed the period of writing music for installations, films, theatrical performances and dance performances, which were warmly received almost all over the world. At the same time, Patrick wrote and recorded experimental tracks, many of which were not published. In 2016, Patrick released the album Tilted Axes, and in 2017 - A SEQUENCE OF WAVES. Both of these albums were released on his label Strange Music.

In 2018, Patrick Grant decided to re-release his first FIELDS AMAZE album, complementing the compositions with previously unpublished material. The renewed, remixed and rethought album was called FIELDS AMAZE and other sTRANGE music. The album was released on Strange Music both as CD and as a digital version- both which can be purchased from the labels Bandcamp page.

On the album cover, we can see a photo of an agricultural field, in the sky above which a powerful cyclone or tornado is forming, from which a lone lightning fork appears. Above the photo is a white area is the composer’s name- this is written in a small, simple white font with a black shadow. Under the photo is a wider white line with the name of the albums title , written in the same font and colour. Judging by the information provided with the album, the music was inspired by chaos theory, biological forms, and B-horror films. Honestly, I find it difficult to say how accurately the informative and musical parts of the album corresponding to the cover. And in my opinion, the cover didn't really seem to link into the albums  sonic components, but, nevertheless, it's effective enough and creates a sense of suspense.

The duration of the album is rather symbolic - 1:01:11. This is similar to binary code.  The album features nine songs of different durations. I will begin the description of the sound of the album by mentioning that thirteen musicians worked on the album. Accordingly, there is often a very rich musical charity to the release. These are mainly classical musical instruments. But there are also electric guitars, bass guitar, gamelan, electronic keyboards and a lot of percussion.

 

The album, despite the general approach to writing music, is clearly divided into two parts with slightly different stylistics. Therefore, I will describe my impressions, conditionally dividing the album into two parts.

The first part of the album consists of tracks one through five - "Keeping Still", "Fields Amaze", "A Distinct: Everything the Same", &  "A Visible Track of Turbulence II". These are chamber compositions based on percussion, & frequent changes of rhythm (which can be quite pretty ragged and interesting). In these compositions, percussion is almost not a rhythmic component. It plays the role of a separate instrument, and sometimes it seems that we can hear the notes played on the percussion instruments. Piano, woodwinds, strings and gamelan play a major role. I'm not sure that we can talk about any melodies, since the overall rich arrangement is based on several often complex chords and has jazz roots, but without improvisation. I would draw comparison with the work of Philip Glass, John Cage and Tan Dun. But I cannot say that Grant borrowed ideas from any of these. Also I'd say you can hear a similar approach to writing music in the avant-prog genre. I realized that (perhaps unknowingly) Patrick Grant introduced into composition similar to the likes of Zeuhl, Univers Zero and Art Zoyd.

The second part of the album begins with the sixth track and ends with the ninth one - "Imaginary Horror Film - Part 1", "The Weights of Numbers", "Imaginary Horror Film - Part 2 ", and "If One Should Happen to Fall". The principle of writing compositions does not change, however, the mood changes and the instrumentation is supplemented. Together with the instruments from the previous compositions, we hear electric guitars and bass. The place of melodic percussion is occupied by rock drums with clearly traced rhythm. However, percussion is still present, but it doesn't perform the way you’d normally expect. In these compositions, there is a clear influence of Zeuhl, Avant-prog and some representatives of the RIO movement, such as Magma. Perhaps some may hear hints of The Residents too. The latter composition,  "If One Should Happen to Fall" - unexpectedly surprises with the classic 70s psychedelic rock with some electronic inserts and leanings towards prog. Also, this is the only track that feature vocals- these are performed  by the wonderful vocalist, composer and performer Lisa Karrer, who collaborated with many famous experimental composers and artists. The vocal timbre of her voice  reminded me of Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane. So maybe that's why I had associations with psychedelic rock of the 70s.

So, in the end, we have an extremely strong album. I can't call it  either a  rock album or neo-classical album. This is a fusion of minimalism, avant-garde, rock, ethnic, electronics, classical and something authorial - original and elusive. In this case, words are useless. It's best to hear it for yourself. Before hearing this album I was not familiar with  Mr Grant's, but I will certainly now be checking more out.