Joel Ryan

As a live performer, Joel Ryan has pioneered the usage of real time digital sampling and processing, notably during the ’90s with British saxophonist Evan Parker. For this release Ryan takes his computers and samples of Parker’s work into a studio setting in order to transfigure and reinterpret them. The musician in Ryan respects the tradition of acoustic instruments and their usage in performance, but the digital inventor within him delights in creating software that implements scenarios impossible in the physical world. In some, the end result comes mostly from multiplication, as in opener "Two/Cut,” where the horn sound is only slightly altered but duplicated ad nauseam until the sound field is flooded by little Parker riffs. Elsewhere, as with the title piece, the properties of breath and resonance of metal are fore-grounded and more or less mute the instrument’s actual sound. Though Ryan claims to try to work in "real time” in the studio setting, his preparedness in knowing the source work and ability to maximise each program’s usefulness for each setting yields much more polished results than would be possible in the live setting.