Tectonics by Elliott Sharp

TECTONICS is a solo program performed on saxophones, guitars, an Apple Powerbook running MAX/MSP as well as various DSP applications, plus a variety of external hardware DSP devices.

Sharp's work with electronics dates back to the late 60's and has included extended techniques on a variety of instruments, both "traditional" and invented, as well as use of analog synthesizers and processors, and, later, experiments with Music 4 running on a PDP. When the Atari ST first appeared, it was utilized to manipulate samples and MIDI devices using the software M in real-time performance. The 1986 release VIRTUAL STANCE (Dossier) and 1988's LOOPPOOL (Ear-rational) documents this work.

This first Tectonics album was recorded at Studio zOaR over a period of months in 1993-94 and represents Sharp's' work in the IDM and dance-noise scene as typified by the NYC venue, SoundLab, home of early jungle and illbient musics. Much of the rhythmic material was created using the algorithmic software M and then edited and reconstructed in ProTools. Extensive use was made of the Buchla Thunder to control the processing of instruments and voices. Originally released on the Atonal label in Berlin, this material has long been unavailable.

Elliott Sharp: composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, author, leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplane with compositional strategies including fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors as well as new techniques for graphic notation to yield work that catalyzes a synesthetic approach to musicmaking as well as functioning as retinal art.