Description
The Anxiety of Symmetry might then be comparable to artist Hanne Darboven’s quasi-Minimal compositions and their basis in odd mathematical calculations derived from the calendar, in taking its cue from an extra-musical process. The two pieces’ polyphony is not far off from Orcutt’s recent Music for Four Guitars, but also marks Anxiety as a departure from both Pure Genius and A Mechanical Joey. The latter bypassed melody and harmony altogether; its relentless, phantasmagorical looping and subdivisions of Joey Ramone’s trademark onstage count-offs could be seen as a wry comment on the repetitions within repetitions of rock songs and their ongoing performances, or simply the monomania of years of touring for months on end. Pure Genius presented a male and female voice stolidly reciting the numbers that correspond to the notes of a scale that are simultaneously generated with sine tones (i.e., when a voice says 'one,' the first note of a scale is heard at the same time); Anxiety collapses Pure Genius’ juxtaposition of pitch and counting by having the numbers sung. Stripped down yet excessive (in the tradition of his other works with Cracked), Anxiety seems less like its predecessors’ deconstructions than a new kind of subversive easy listening." - Alan Licht
Format / LP
Released / 05/30/2025
Catalogue / FAKE-017
Barcode / 843563188088
Artist / Bill Orcutt
Label / Fake Estates
Genre / Pop / Rock