Mountains
Drawing on the rich history of musique concrète while most recently exploring minimal single instrument composition, his music is one of contrast and contradiction. Abstract tendencies conjoin with basic intimate melodies. Disruptive sequencing is utilized alongside loops and repeating patterns. Meticulous audio editing creates calculated timing while improvised passages lend expressive mistakes. Mountains is a collection of piano compositions highlighting not only evolving melody but the environment in which the instrument was recorded.
Tracklisting:
- F
- G
- C
- E (Edit)
- L
Justin Varis
Justin Varis (b.Cincinnati, OH 1979) is an American musician/composer living in Los Angeles. Drawing on the rich history of musique concrète while most recently exploring minimal single instrument composition, his music is one of contrast and contradiction. Abstract tendencies conjoin with basic intimate melodies. Disruptive sequencing is utilized alongside loops and repeating patterns. Meticulous audio editing creates calculated timing while improvised passages lend expressive mistakes.
Reviews
Fluid RadioJustin Varis is an American musician and composer who currently resides in Los Angeles. Inspired by the rich and varied history of musique concrete, Varis has recently been pursuing minimal, single instrument composition – in this case, the piano. The artists offerings, both under his own name and as Claudia, have featured on numerous compilations and on labels such as Frozen Elephants Music and Audiobulb Records. Varis is joined here with Kevin Ponto, though little information is given as to how large his role is here.
Mountains begins with ten long seconds of silence and this is apt, since at times, the music within this EP length release is as much about what is not played, as what is, and those opening moments of nothingness serve to focus the mind for what is to come.
A composition, simply titled F, introduces Mountains and Varis treats the listener to a melodic piano refrain which could form the beginning of a very tuneful ballad. This straight path to song is soon left behind however and the artist instead takes strong and confident strides into unexplored terrain. Varis chooses to manipulate the almost careless-sounding notes into something else, something far more deliberate.
Working with piano and with the ambience created by sound waves reflecting off surfaces and into the microphone’s diaphragm, Varis edits and manipulates the audio until near destruction, encouraging the listener to appraise each moment afresh. At first, the notes feel almost too jarring and the mind seeks to collate them into pattern, but to do so would be missing the point, so it is far better to relax and enjoy the performance. Once one gives in to passive listening, complex patterns and organic randomness fit together much more fully. Musique Concrete is a familiar and much respected influence cited by many musicians, but seldom does an artist properly encapsulate the character of what one imagines those French pioneers of sound were striving for.
Attempts at highly conceptual work such as this can all too easily fall flat on their face, but Justin Varis’s measured approach pays off and the artist gives rise to a work which walks a line between melody and sound, this is true abstract composing and it is compelling.