khasma

The title of khasma derives from a passage in Hesiod's Theogony describing the stormy gulf (khasma) far below the surface of the earth, where the roots of the earth, heavens and Tartarus are situated, along with the «dreadful halls of gloomy Night». Writing at a time when Greek cosmology was about to emerge from myth-ridden confusion into proto-scientific speculation, Hesiod dimly anticipates the later philosophical contemplation of chaos, and the indefinite or infinite (apeiron) by Anaximander and his successors.

khasma consists of six sections for string quintet and six for electronic sounds, which overlay and interpenetrate one another in microcosmic reflection of the large-scale interlocking construction of DARK MATTER; between the human performers and their disembodied counterpart lies an unbridgeable «gulf» -- in other words the relationship is primarily one of highly-stylised antagonism (in which it reflects upon the conjectured forms of the earliest lost Greek tragedies). The instrumental music could also be seen as a sequence of «theories» concerning its own material. The progression through its six sections is one from relative disorder towards sound-forms full of symmetries and canonic interrelations, but always with a complementary tendency towards chaos. For example, the fifth section is a highly deterministic canon by both durational and intervallic augmentation, though in a state of gradual crumbling dissolution. The electronic parts, on the other hand, have the character of «discovered» sound-objects (discovered in a computer, that is) which resist such formalisation.