Petri Kuljuntausta: MOMENTUM
2003
Liner notes
In the pieces on this CD I have concentrated on short sound samples which I have used as a basic material for composing. What fascinates me about using “frozen sounds”, is their dreamy, slow and timeless character. After stretching or transposing the sounds down you could start to hear hidden characteristics – microlevel sound phenomena, interesting overtones, colourful, vibrating and sometimes strange textures.
When a musician hits a note while playing, many things happens at the microlevel inside the sound that the musician isn’t aware of. In these pieces I have tried to find these hidden characteristics of music and as a source material I have used sounds taken, for example, from my string quartet recordings. Just a tiny sample, lasting only a fraction of second, might give life to a whole new work. Concentration on restricted sound material means a great deal for my composition work, and part of the stimulation and enjoyment is the feedback that you’ll get while allowing sounds simply to be what they are.
The “altered music” on this CD might give a vision about a performance of unreal, surrealistic musicians. And partly this is true. These performances are impossible for musicians to realise in live performance. At my concerts I have given an extra dimension and colour to some of the pieces by processing sounds in real-time and/or using additional sounds.
Petri Kuljuntausta
