Tristan Perich – Drift Multiply (2020)

You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

Once or twice a year, if you are incredibly fortunate, you may discover a piece of music that changes the definitions of those words I like to use so often to describe the music. Words like “experimental electronic” or “avant-garde neo-classical” or, god forbid, “minimal techno”. Generally speaking, whenever I try to turn on a friend, co-worker or whoever to a piece of music or an album I’ve fallen for, I usually get stopped right after the first sentence. And if I dare use one of those aforementioned terms, it’s not only that the conversation is over. But try to picture disappointed and accusatory faces completely paralyzed by the thought of me pontificating about the glories of a long out-of-print record never released to the general public. I usually speak in a whispering hush, Mafia style. As if the fix was in.

The problem? The fix may be in, but they’re not listening. They know it and I know it. These are good citizens that will never listen or embrace the music I’m so passionate about. And If you don’t understand what I’m going on about, well, consider yourself lucky. Let me assure you, it’s a great way to shred a few friendships. Which isn’t as funny as it may seem after a certain point. The point is, that you simply can’t have those in-depth musical conversations about say, the best Hawkwind albums, with just anyone. That kind of cultural and intellectual madness is limited. Just ask our friend Hunter Thompson: the crest broke a long time ago. And unfortunately, even with the “right kind of eye”, the high watermark has faded away. Only those few fellow travelers who have signed on for the entire trip will care past a sentence or two. So save yourself. It’s too late for me. The dices have been cast, my path chosen.

Unfortunately, I never learned that lesson. So fuck it. Fair warning to those in my orbit: I’ll continue to share my thoughts regularly. So, as I was saying, once or twice a year we discover a piece of music that not only changes our definitions but challenges us, dares us or forces us to risk something, just like art should be. I stumbled across Tristan Perich’s Drift Multiply quite by chance. It was the sleeve design at first, a black and white drawing. The simplicity and complexity of the intersecting curved lines, the light and shade, the lack of color, the clean (anti-)graphic aesthetic. But none of this prepared me for the rare beauty of the noise within those 0s and 1s.  

Drift Multiply for 50 violins and 50-Channel 1-Bit Electronic – Conducted by Douglas Perkins creeps up on you. Like a steady sound coming from a part of the house you know is empty. It just shouldn’t be. You listen closer. A vortex of swirling black and gray sound is coming from beneath a closed door, the sound slowly engulfing your head as thousands tiny pieces of noise flood the room. A sonic flash tornado that removes you. Each particle of sound looking like the other from a distance, but like the album’s sleeve design, that simplicity is deceptive. The more you listen to Drift Multiply, the more you see and understand the complexity, the separation, the difference. The uniqueness. Then it hits you that the storm of all this noise goes much deeper.

I’ll never forget the sound of a train station as a boy. My ears had never been so full. The sound of screaming noise from those trains left no room in my head. Only the power of the noise of steel against steel. Harsh and piercing at first, almost deafening until it became so overwhelming that noise overloaded my entire system. I felt intoxicated. Everything else swept away, and I became completely unaware of my parents or anyone around me. Only a mass of swirling sound, I heard and saw nothing else, nor did I search it.  

The music on Tristan Perich’s Drift Multiply is the sound of dense, difficult, living composition. Combining together the sound of 50 violins, loud speakers, and electronics into waveforms that contrast and highlight noise and tone.   

by Shawn Ciavattone

(Drift Multiply is on our Best Albums of 2020 list)