Paul D. Miller: 'Rhythm Science'

(sketch of Devon Howard playing an organ in Hendrik-Ido Ambacht, April 2006)

in 2004, composer/philosopher Paul D. Miller released his latest in a long line of Electronic albums: 'Rhythm Science'. an interesting thing about this album was that it was released with the publication of his book with the same title. i don't own the book, and so I can't really comment on it, but the album is fantastic. it's not really 'listening music' because it's frankly schizophrenic and a little bit 'artsy' (be warned), but it's by no means "ugly" (see last blog post).

i haven't even read any notes by the artist himself concerning this album, but i think it pretty well speaks for itself. 'Rhythm Science' is basically a experiment in finding rhythm - musical rhythm - in everyday life. the really brilliant thing about this album is that Paul D. Miller doesn't look in a lot of the obvious places to find these rhythms. it's definitely not anthropologist's collection of native beats, etc... but you get the impression that Miller is trying to show us how subtle musicality can be found all around us. among the samples that Miller uses on this album are tracks from Bill Laswell, Yoshio Machida, Hugo Distler... but Miller doesn't use the same chop-shop tactics of modern dj's on these tracks... he simply takes these recording samples and illuminates them with layers of sound from his computer... the emphasis is still very much on the tracks themselves. some of the most interesting tracks are the recordings of spoken word.. E.E. Cummings and Gertrude Stein appear on two tracks reading their own works. after listening to the album several times, it's striking how the very distincts patterns of these two writers' voices are truly musical. directly after a similar, very complex track featuring the voice of Russian Futurist Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, the bottom falls out, and all you hear is the faint, scratchy sound of an ancient recording of composer Claude Debussy playing his own piano music.



the whole album is very much an album of music, but it's somewhat beyond conventional music, while at the same time, very listenable. it's not dinner music, and you have to pay close attention, but i'd still recommend it to just about anyone who likes to think about what goes into their ears.