Keith Fullerton Whitman makes his Lampo debut at long last. To mark the special occasion, he offers the U.S. premiere of Rhythmes Naturels, created at INA-GRM in Paris, plus a live modular synth improvisation.

Last October Whitman spent a week in France, commissioned to develop a new piece for François Bayle’s Acousmonium, an 80-speaker sound system designed in 1974 for the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. Pierre Schaeffer formed GRM, a studio and collective, in the 1950s to encourage the development of electronic music. Members included Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani, among other lions; in the late 1960s Bayle became its director.

“The piece features 80 discrete channels of improvisations (including percussion by Eli Keszler) that are applied in a concentric-ring fashion to the Bayle-designed collection of vintage Elipsons and sparklers and a contemporary array of full-range speakers,” explains Whitman.

“Incorporating recordings made of both the ‘blue’ and ‘gray’ Coupigny modular synthesizers (as heard on Bayle’s ‘Erosphère’ and Henry’s ‘Mise en Musique du Corticalart’), the Publison DHM 89 stereo digital audio computer, and the KB 2000 keyboard (ditto, Parmegiani’s ‘La Création du Monde’ and Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’), it continues [my] work with vintage, regional electronic musical instruments put in place with Multiples.”

Here, he’ll do his new work in a four-channel mix.

Keith Fullerton Whitman (b.1973, Bergen County, N.J.) is a composer and performer obsessed with electronic music, from its mid-century origins in Europe to its contemporary worldwide incarnation as digital music. Currently he is working towards implementing a complete system for live performance of improvised electronic music, which incorporates elements from nearly every era. He has recorded albums influenced by many genres, including ambient music, drone, drill and bass, musique concrète and krautrock. He has recorded and performed using several aliases, of which the most familiar is Hrvatski. Today most of his work is recorded under his real name. Whitman lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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