City Geese, Country Geese Ê

Three field recordings - one of a basketball game at West 4th St. and Sixth Ave., one of another basketball game at the ABC Playground at Houston and Essex Streets, and one of geese on the estate of Jim and Jennifer Romeo in Carrboro, NC - are combined in a sound environment that proves that the country is just as noisy as the city.

Twilight of the Idols

This piece consists of a long fade out, followed by a long fade in. The fourth Led Zeppelin album, which is untitled, is played. Side one begins to fade out almost immediately, and by the end of the side the music is barely audible. Side two starts off at this volume level and then gradually rises in volume back to the thunderous level the album began at. The mix is stereo to recreate the original album mix and also the playback system with which the album is always heard.

Hmm. Well, that's swell, but what, you ask, is the point?

Is it an allegory for the changing of seasons, as summer gradually turns to a dark and cold winter and then gradually turns into spring? Or for the light of day fading as night falls, and then returning as the sun rises in the early morning?

Is it a time-stretched, super slow-motion aural recreation of a teenager turning the music down at his parents' request and then turning it back up when they're out of earshot?

Is it a comment on the fading glory of the classic rock era, followed by the reaffirmation of the music's continued vitality? A comment on the former ubiquity of side one's closer, "Stairway to Heaven", which was once easily heard on the radio several times a day and in this piece gets literally harder and harder to hear?

Is the title a reference to Nietzsche's book of the same name, which is itself a takeoff on Wagner's Gotterdämmerung? Or to Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods) in Scandanavian mythology - the day of doom in which the old world and all its inhabitants are annihilated, and a new world of peace is born? Does it have something to do with grunge replacing the hair metal of the 70s and 80s in the early 90s? Or is the piece a transcription of the end of the current Piscean Age and a premonition of the Aquarian Age?

You tell me.

Alan Licht
Brooklyn NY September 2003

Alan Licht:

Composer Alan Licht has released four albums of pieces for solo and multiple guitars, the latest of which is A NEW YORK MINUTE (XI). He's alsoÊrecorded and performed as an improvisor with Rashied Ali, Jim O'Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Lukas Ligeti, Derek Bailey, Charles Curtis, Ulrich Krieger, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Nihilist Spasm Band, Fred Lonberg-Holm, William Hooker, Michael Snow, Keiji Haino, DJ Olive, Rudolph Grey, Christian Fennesz, DJ Spooky, Glenn Kotche, Doug McCombs, Marina Rosenfeld, Okkyung Lee, Raz Mesinai, Toshio Kajiwara,ÊTetuzi Akiyama, I-Sound, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Tim Barnes, Anton Fier, and others.
His previous sound installations include "Today I Am A Fountain Pen" (Studio Five Beekman, NYC, 1998) and "The Downsizing of Don Dokken" (part of 'Constrictions' exhibition at Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, 1996). A video/sound installation, "Let Me Show You What a Wild-Boy Charge is Like" is currently on view at the Neon Gallery, Brosarp, Sweden, and will travel to NYC this winter.ÊÊ
Licht also writes about music for the WIRE, TIME OUT NY, and other publications; about film for PREMIERE and FILM COMMENT; and is the author of An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn (Drag City Press, 2002).

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