''Substatic'' is the fourth solo album by
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
composer
Peter Jefferies, released on September 29, 1998 through
Emperor Jones. One of his most musically ambitious and emotionally complex efforts, it marks Jefferies' return to the completely instrumental format he had previously explored on his 1987 album ''
At Swim 2 Birds''.
Composition
''Substatic'' is known to be one of Jefferies' most experimental and musically adventurous recordings. The album comprises five pieces of music, including a lengthy seventeen-minute suite titled "Three Movements". The compositions are based around repetitious rhythms created by Jefferies' pianodrum, a combination of a keyboard and the
snare
SNARE proteins – "Soluble NSF attachment protein, SNAP REceptors" – are a large protein family consisting of at least 24 members in yeasts and more than 60 members in mammalian and plant cells.
The primary role of SNARE proteins is to m ...
and
bass drum
The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter usually greater than its depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The head ...
sections of a drum set, and are partially improvised.
The use of
sampling is prominently used as part of the composition of ''Substatic''. The piece "Index" includes sampled vocals of Jean Smith of
Mecca Normal, taken from a 1995 live performance.
"Damage" features audience noise which was recorded by
Bruce Russell during a live performance. A digeridoo played by Alicia Aaparros Duran can be heard on the album's final track, "Three Movements".
Reception
Joe Garden of ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...
'' was also enthusiastic in his review of the album, saying that the music covers "a wide breadth of emotions" and is "highly charged, mostly toward the negative end of the emotional spectrum."
Ned Raggett of
allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
gave it three out of five stars and called it a "striking, varied album" with "intentionally and beautifully murky production."
Track listing
Personnel
*Anita Galitis-Anker –
gong
A gongFrom Indonesian language, Indonesian and ; ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ; ; ; ; is a percussion instrument originating from Southeast Asia, and used widely in Southeast Asian and East Asian musical traditions. Gongs are made of metal and ...
on "Index",
bells on "Damage",
flute
The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...
and
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...
on "Three Movements"
*Michael Hill –
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stat ...
,
bass guitar
The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...
on "Index", "Kitty Loop" and "Three Movements",
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked, its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
on "Index" and "Three Movements",
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...
on "Three Movements"
*
Peter Jefferies –
electric piano
An electric piano is a musical instrument that has a piano-style musical keyboard, where sound is produced by means of mechanical hammers striking metal strings or reeds or wire tines, which leads to vibrations which are then converted into ele ...
,
grand piano
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...
,
keyboards,
drums
The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...
, electric guitar, bass guitar
References
{{Authority control
1998 albums
Peter Jefferies albums