oakland reductionist orchestra to Debut Album

This Friday will see the debut album release of the oakland reductionist orchestra. This is a large ensemble that has served as the “house band” for the WEST OAKLAND SOUND SERIES presented by sfSound. The group describes itself as “a new supergroup of Bay Area musicians with a predilection for lowercase, fricative, and reductionist improvisation that often sounds more electronic than acoustic.”

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Queen Bee Records)

The title of the new album is west and east baying. It will be released this coming Friday, but Bandcamp has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. As might be guessed from the title, there are two tracks. The first is entitled “west bay,” and it documents a performance that took place at The Lab (a venue that should be familiar to many readers). The second track, “east of west baying,” was a “made in the studio” result of a controlled environment recorded in Berkeley. This latter composition is a contemporary approach to the musique concrète genre produced by matt ingalls, who is “the ensemble’s founder and ringleader.”

My interest in that genre goes all the way back to my student days. My first “academic” encounter came when I took the Twentieth-Century Music course, and I am afraid that the professor really did not know what to make of it. However, by the time I was a graduate student, I had shifted my attention from the classroom to the works that Ezra Sims was creating with tape recorders in his living room. As a result, I was more than well-prepared when I first wrote about the San Francisco Tape Music Festival for Examiner.com in January of 2011.

Where this new album is concerned, I rather like the idea of the juxtaposition of “live” and “studio.” Both of the tracks are about 25 minutes in duration. It would be fair to say that each one of them will hold up to sustained attention. On the other hand, I think that listening to this album in its entirety might be a bit much. Fortunately, most of us have the benefit of technology for enjoying the merits of each track individually. Hopefully, I shall have an opportunity to listen to this ensemble in performance in the near future!