The range of music explored here at NF falls pretty neatly into any basic indie music website’s year-end list. Even at our most esoteric, we’re still only capable of reaching /mu/core levels of eccentricity. We are pretty damn rudimentary, but what are we supposed to do about it? It isn’t our fault that we like our rock to be alternative, our pop to be indie, and our shoes to be gazed! This essay is the product of two factors: first, a request from my mother (a professional cellist) that this publication include at least one article concerning orchestral music this year. Second, a desire emerging from within myself to write about at least one piece of music that hasn’t received BNM from Pitchfork. The fact that my taste seems to be that of a basic bitch is corroding the very root of my soul, and I’ve got to prove to our readers that their Managing Editor isn’t as boring as he has seemed throughout the last two volumes. Let’s get on with it: “Become Ocean” by John Luther Adams (no, not the second president “John Adams” or the sixth president “John Quincy Adams” or the other orchestral composer, “John Coolidge Adams”) is the most refreshingly new piece of orchestral music to be produced in the current century. This isn’t another forgettable entry into the canon of modern atonality that has reigned supreme over the last 70 years. It also isn’t an excessively experimental piece of “art music” that can only be appreciated by intellectuals in dark Berlin coffee houses. The brilliance of the piece arises from the fact that there is a diverse array of per16
spectives from which to approach the piece, as well as a multitude of ways in which it can be interpreted. To demonstrate, and to get my mandatory once-per-issue citation of My Bloody Valentine out of the way, I liken “Become Ocean” to their classic song “Sometimes.” Both tracks consist of warring musical factions (amorphous vs. structured, diatonic vs. dissonant, et cetera). For example, “Sometimes” has no percussion, but its guitars are so insistently propulsive that it’s impossible to describe the song as shapeless. The same trick is used in the piece’s texture, where the harmonies are presented by two guitars: one impossibly slow and reverb-drenched, and the other choppy and bright. MBV mixes the disparate elements together in such a way that the song is fast, slow, distorted, and clear all at once. “Become Ocean” is able to achieve this same effect via deeply creative instrumentation and structure. It is scored for a relatively standard orchestra, with the only notable additions being four harps, two marimbas, piano, celesta, and a percussionist that handles bass drum, tam-tam, and suspended cymbal responsibilities. On stage, the brass, woodwinds, and strings are
