Kronos Quartet/Terry Riley – Sun Rings
Nonesuch
The Fall – Live At The Witch Trials
Cherry Red records
Space exploration is news again, maybe even exciting again, and not just thanks to the moon landing half-centenary. It may be a ruse to turn attention away from catastrophic climate change here on earth and remind us we might need to find and terraform a new home soonish. Or it might just be that some tarnish has been brushed off the romance of it all.
Some years ago, Nasa made available some recordings of extraterrestrial phenomena to David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, the eternally hip string group who made their name wearing spandex instead of tuxes and playing Hendrix encores.
Kronos asked minimalist composer, Terry Riley, to create a new work based on plasma waves. These ripples of ionised gas mean that, pace the tag line of another famous film, someone could hear you scream out there. Riley in turn called on electronic composer, David Dvorin, to do the lab-coat work before building a score for string quartet, choir and effects that has now been released on the Nonesuch label as Sun Rings.