Four Walls by Chris Forbes

Since I was in late elementary school I’ve had a fascination with electronic music. The development of the synthesizer, first at the Columbia/Princeton labs and then the modular Moog of Switched On Bach and Tomita really turned my ears upside down. But my favorite work was the musique concrète of Darmstadt and Paris. Something about the manipulation of tape with filters, loops, echos and splicing created a lushness of sound that I still think is unmatched. But, outside of a one week course I took at St Olaf College when I was 12, I never really had access to high level electronics studios and never learned the techniques of manipulating sound used by Schaeffer, Ligeti and Xenakis. Later, when I got to school, digital and “realistic” sound was all the rage on the more conservative schools I went to and my interest fell by the wayside.

Later, in the mid 2000s I got very interested in hiphop and sampling technology. What particularly shocked me about hip hop production is how much the basic synthesis and sound manipulation processes had not changed. The filters, reverse techniques, uses of pan and reverb all remained from the old days. It was just much easier to manipulate digital samples than old analogue tape.

As time went on my interest in making hip hop beats kinda waned but my reinvigorated interest in electronic music remained strong. I also introduced some of these techniques to sixth grade classes I taught. We would collect sounds from the school and neighborhood and created highly synthesized soundscapes which we used as backgrounds to art installations. As is often the case for me, my teaching and outside creativity enriched each other.

Fast forward again to the pandemic. Electronic home music production and video became a lifeline for many of us. In that long homebound summer of 2020 Tom Cabrera and I tried an experiment. We multitracked a piano and drum duet. Then he let me have carte blanche to work with the tracks electronically. I pick three short samples of piano and one drum sample and woven an electronic track around the improvisations. Then I took some video of the “four walls” of my living room and created an abstract video using analogous video techniques. We actually did a second where I was going to make a similar video of my kitchen but my computer crashed.

So this past January we decided to expand this dormant idea into full album. First Tom and I got together and did 10 improvisations. Then I took each improv and built electronics around them. Some of the pieces use sound sources outside what’s found on the track, but most are generated just using piano and drum samples.

The actual materials and techniques of the album are surprisingly varied. And emotionally the piece is very much a response to the tenor of our times. Genesis is an attempt to sample just piano and drum sounds using techniques inspired by contemporary spectralism. Chaos of the Chimera is a meditation on the chaos of our current times. Shadows of the Past ended up resembling Gershwin’s second prelude so I added some samples of Paul Whitman and Bessie Smith which are deeply hid in the electronics, and speak to a contrast between authenticity and appropriation. Warning Bells is quite topical and uses samples of past and current speeches, military marching and deep bells to examine the rise of authoritarianism across the globe. Ghosts of Fourth Street is a tribute to the New York School of composers, artists and poets, who have been very influential in my own development. The improv is in the manner of a Feldman piece or Cage’s number pieces. Sound and Silence is a Schoenbergian scherzo, and an attempt at the playful using avant garde language. Storm Clouds on the Horizon is based on drones, microtonal harmony in the electronic track, and a literal Stravinsky quote. To the Past and Future Martyrs is a tribute to great fallen progressive leaders of the world and features speeches from many of them, including the last speeches of both MLK and Salvatore Allende. It is also obliquely a tribute to Luigi Nono. Even When He Is Silent features a beautiful quote from South African Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu and ends the album on a note of hope and lightness.

I’m am deeply excited about this album and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Pianist Chris Forbes trained as a classical pianist and composer,
began improvising early, first performing at 11. A scholarship from Downbeat sent him to Berklee, dividing his time between jazz, classical and
composition. He studied at Juilliard School with David
Diamond. He's played with Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Steve Swell, Jason Hwang, Matt Lavelle, Ras Moshe, Lee Odom, Zone, Tom
Cabrera..