Score: 21st Century Junkie
For six pianos and tape [2000] ?Duration: c. 7 ½ mins.
Notes:
Commissioned for Piano Circus as part of the 2000 Planet Tree Music Festival, 21st Century Junkie is an snap-shot observation and response to the velocious consumerism at the turn of the millennium. Scored for six pianos and sound-file, the work plays on the connotations of ‘junk’ in a hallucinogenic world of associative references.
Among the pianist’s analgesic and hypnotic interplay of hocketing lies a collage of references that are deliberately hackneyed and expeditious in delivery: the striking of a match (spun back and forth in a retro 80’s DJ technique known as ‘scratching’); the once familiar dial-up tone into the World Wide Web; the iconic Nokia ring tone; and samples of advertisements that reflect the fast-paced nature of life at the millennium. These are interwoven amongst darker references that allude to the hedonistic nature of modern society: the slow inhalation and exhalation of a smoker; and sampled words associated with addictive recreational lifestyles..
© Patrick Nunn 2017
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