Gray Code - Floating Point
Gray Code - Floating Point
(circ 057)
Personnel: Kevin Patton (guitar, electronics, TaurEx), Butch Rovan (alto clarinet, electronics, MiMICS, soprano clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, xaphoon), and Frederick Kennedy (drumset, percussion)
Contents: Xaphoon, Pastoral Detune, (Re)Bound, Elephantine, Bowed Clarinet, Dronehead, Purvis Bearing, Topsy's Hawser

Floating Point captures the electroacoustic trio Gray Code in a series of live performances over a period of 2 years, representing the evolution of this unique outfit’s experimentations with the combination of free improvisation and interactive electronics. In these recordings, the electro-jazz trio explores the physicality of sound through layered rhythmic patterns, complex collage, and the computer manipulation of guitar, clarinets, and percussion. With Butch Rovan on reeds and electronics, Kevin Patton on guitar and electronics, and Fred Kennedy on drums and percussion, Gray Code makes each live performance a spontaneous “happening,” in which the electronic elements relate playfully to the acoustic music, sometime leading and sometimes following. Unpredictable and consistently exciting, Floating Point documents a very unusual and compelling group in some of their most creative moments.

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PURCHASE

"[Patton's] Guitar based free playing morphs into feedback avalanches, or vice versa, and labels like jazz, noise, or rock become meaningless."
-The Wire

“Rovan's work is a triumph of combining art and technology."
-Computer Music Journal

"Rovan's performance was a truly unique spectacle...”
-La Nazione (Italy)

AllAboutJazz.com has likened Kennedy’s “multi-phase pulse” to a “snarling beast,” and says that Kennedy’s “slashing” drumming keeps the listener “locked in and off-balance at the same time.”

release date: February 2010
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