Frkwys Vol. 18: Extended Field

Description

Extended Field brings together Horse Lords and Arnold Dreyblatt for the eighteenth volume of the FRKWYS series, which fosters intergenerational encounters between adventurous musicians. All come together here around the luminous universe of just intonation, a tuning system based on whole number ratios. Dreyblatt delved into it in the 1970s in New York, while Horse Lords became interested nearly forty years later. Their collaboration gives birth to a vibrant harmonic environment, fueled by a shared passion for rhythm and the exploration of distinct yet complementary sonic languages. A pioneer of psychoacoustic phenomena, Arnold Dreyblatt worked alongside La Monte Young before studying with Alvin Lucier. Very early on, he modified his double bass with piano strings to produce metallic clouds of harmonics, laying the groundwork for his seminal album Nodal Excitation (1982). Based in Berlin for several decades, he has developed a body of work centered on these resonant sounds with various ensembles. For their part, Horse Lords forge a hybrid sound, driven by pulsating rhythms where ritual music, free jazz, and electronic explorations intersect. After their album The Common Task in 2020, the majority of the band settled in Germany, which facilitated the meeting with Dreyblatt. This materialized in 2021, after exchanges initiated a few years earlier. The composition sessions brought together different harmonic conceptions, reconciled thanks to the contribution of drummer Andrea Belfi. The structures proposed by Andrew Bernstein and Owen Gardner intertwine with Dreyblatt’s tonal systems, while Max Eilbacher develops frequency algorithms via SuperCollider. The result transcends the sum of the contributions: the polyrhythmic breath of Horse Lords remains, but combines with Dreyblatt’s numerical rigor. Pieces like Extended Field or the evolving drone Suspension bear witness to this rare fusion, where constraints and algorithms become drivers of shared inventiveness.