A Presentation

Description

Composer / saxophonist / multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bernstein has been an essential part of the Baltimore experimental music scene as a member of avant-rock champions Horse Lords, a frequent collaborator with acts like Dan Deacon and Matmos, and an erstwhile member of the High Zero Collective ' Baltimore's premier experimental music presenter. Based in Baltimore for much of the last two decades, he currently resides with his family in Germany. Under his own name, Bernstein composes music focused on the material of sound, typically oriented around the tuning system of just intonation: the selection of notes based on the physical properties of sound which yields frequencies that provide more "perfect" harmonies outside of the capabilities of the 12-tone scales that appear in Western music in idioms ranging from classical / orchestral composition, to mainstream pop, and most everything in between. Bernstein's work can swell into flights of virtuosic sheets-of-sound overload or stretch individual tones into time-dilating durational exercises that emphasize the relationships between overtones and explore the unique harmonic series that he lays out for each piece. Andrew Bernstein returns to Hausu Mountain with a new album called a presentation. Oriented around his long-form, layered saxophone performances and presented with occasional drone-based accompaniment from electronic sound sources, the album finds the artist pushing the limits of both his compositional ideas and the physical reality of his craft. The result proves just as spellbinding as Bernstein's work on the more rhythmically busy side of the spectrum, showcasing his patience as a composer, his deep tutelage in the properties of overtones and microtonal harmonies, and the improbable precision with which he can produce sounds from his saxophone - an instrument not necessarily designed to easily achieve these specific frequencies / pitches - in order to match the ideas in his head.