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The Unthinkable (1988-89) |
This piece, my first for electroacoustic tape, was composed and realised on UPIC in Paris and London in December 1988 and January 1989, and re-edited at STEIM, Amsterdam in March 1995. It is the fourth and final part of a series of works for different instumentations collectively entitled 'After Matta', which are named after paintings by the Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta. 'The Unthinkable' is dedicated to Paul Obermayer. Barrett's revision to the original is slight, consisting largely of overlapping each of the 22 previously separate sections, with additional fine-tuning. The piece relates in parellel, not realising or portraying Matta's painting (of 1957), but sharing characteristics with it. Roberto Matta was a surrealist painter, and 'The Unthinkable' contains a scientific box-like construction, with apparent rods and other seemingly mechanical devices protruding from it. It is nonetheless violent and kinetic, and Barrett's music reflects this, bubbling and seething - one might almost say fermenting - with barely-suppressed fury.
© Richard Barrett