Brilliant, But Not for the Neophyte   August 21, 2002

If, however, you are already open to strong music, then get this CD. It's pwerful stuff and not for the wimpy!


essential music of a chaotic century   June 16, 2001
  11 out of 12 found this review helpful

This is a live recording of Kraanerg from New York City, 1996. Xenakis supervised the rehearsals, and was present at the performance. That should be enough to quell those who doubt the integrity of this version -- Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, handles the "quadraphonic ADAT" admirably! This is an electro-acoustic piece (75 minutes worth), but the electronics do not dominate. The ST-X Ensemble, formed by director Charles Bornstein specifically to perform the works of Xenakis in the U.S., places strings, woodwinds and trombones at the sonic forefront. Part of the electronic component includes tapes of a 1960s performance of the piece.

Xenakis called his compositional technique "stochastic music," and although I have not seen a clear exposition, apparently it involves the use of mathematics, algorithms, to produce patterns. You can easily imagine that you are hearing the product of a complex equation while listening to Kraanerg! Here is Xenakis describing his experiences as a communist/anti-fascist partisan in Greece during World War II from the liner notes, translating them into his musical theory:

"...the reports of dozens of machine guns and the whistle of bullets add their punctuations to this total disorder. The crowd is then rapidly dispersed, and after sonic and visual hell follows a detonating calm, full of despair, dust, and death. The statistical laws of these events, separated from their political or moral context, are the same as those of the cicadas or the rain. They are the laws of the passage from complete order to total disorder in a continuous or explosive manner. They are stochastic laws."


Unpleasant   April 18, 2000
  1 out of 50 found this review helpful

This CD came to bury Xenakis, not to praise him.


Mindblowing!   March 30, 2000
  8 out of 11 found this review helpful

Anyone who has wondered how chaos theory could and should translate into music should check this out. It is not for the faint hearted, a rollercoaster ride into sonic mayhem where the composer's impeccable sense of aesthetics and consummate mathematical skills hold the frantic aural barrage together. Dense string harmonies jostle with wildly pitch-bent horn figures that challenge accepted musical sensibilities. All this against a backdrop of electronic textures that render "Kraanerg" one of the most multi-dimensional sonic adventures of all time. There's an added bonus of some fascinating liner notes as well!


pleasantly difficult   January 13, 2000
  4 out of 12 found this review helpful

Iannis Xenakis has never been known for being the most accessible composer of our time exactly. Therefore it should be surprising that Kraanerg is an incredibly monstrous and overall difficult composition to sit through. Less overtly electronic than past works, this one is composed for an ensemble consisting primarily of woodwinds and horns. DJ Spooky added some effects to the mix and organized the sound, but overall the most interesting aspect is the mechanical nature of the interaction of mostly acoustic instruments.