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Gaudenz Badrutt - Palace [Bruit Editions - 2025]

Gaudenz Badrutt has composed what might be the most compelling contemporary update to the work of Charles Ives, bringing the American composer into dialogue with a host of techniques – electronics and sampling chief among them – while continuing the perambulatory nature of Ives's example. Palace is the result of this foray into the real-time mash-up of electroacoustic composition with archival recordings, including snippets of Badrutt's playing Ives pieces on the piano. The addition of feedback and oscillating sine waves gives the piece both continuity and drive, making sure that we can never stay too long in one place, looking for the next bend in the road, around the Ivesian gazebo.

Aesthetically, Palace is not something one could characterize as soothing or easy listening, nor should it be considering its heritage. The fact of unannounced squeals and bleeps keeps listeners on their toes: the ground, as it were, of this stroll through the cosmos. In addition to the piano recordings and electronics, Badrutt includes samples of his daughter, enabling a productive contrast of the human voice with the atonal miasma that engulfs it. Broken into two long pieces, "In" and "Out", respectively, the latter of the two is the real star of the show and puts the brutal chaos of Badrutt's palette on full display, with ear-piercing frequencies, as the swarm of electronic noise devours everything in its wake. A tiny beacon of light emerges at the very end of Palace, though its form is not that of resolution nor conclusion. Rather, we are leaving this palace of plentitude for something more open and therefore unknown.
 
Fans of Ives, early atonal music, and truly challenging listening that demands near unwavering attention, will find Palace extremely rewarding. Others familiar with Badrutt and/or new music variations on electroacoustic composition will find much to appreciate here.  

Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5

Colin Lang
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