Name: Snow Looks Like Cigarette Ash by Erich Barganier
Duration: 8 min 16 s
Description: Performed by Lily Wohl, Composed by Erich Barganier

for amplified piccolo and windup toys

Video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQYDQoFZAGU&feature=emb_logo

Notes: 
I've had these windup toys for years. Purchased them, initially, for their bright colors and size to run tests on a program I'd built for a completely unrelated project. Though immediately their potential began whispering. 
The related soundscape between these toys and the piccolo is obviously a central idea to this piece, the clicking and the pitched noise, but there is also something very tangible about the relationship of the winding down/winding up function in the toys to that of breathing/the lungs of a flutist that became the underpinnings of this piece.

Et Error No.2 (2021)for amplified piccolo and windup toys

Black Iris for fixed media.
Created by Lily Koslow in December 2021, at the McGill Digital Composition Studios in Montreal.
Cover photo by Gabriel Koslow.

Black Iris

Written for Alarm Will Sound, amplified sinfonietta and live keyboard sampler for the electronics.

Hasta que no pueda (2023)

Performed by Lily Wohl, Composed by Erich Barganier

Snow Looks Like Cigarette Ash

Zome

Dume

Our version of 'To Build a Home' by the Cinematic Orchestra (May 2020)

To Build A Home - Cinematic Orchestra

Goom

cocteau twins cover song w/ add. vocals by Ajay Raghuraman:
https://lakesuccess.bandcamp.com/releases

download:
https://ohsenova.bandcamp.com/

Cherry-Coloured Funk (w/ Ajay Raghuraman)

electric guitar, max msp, wekinator 

Improvising on electric guitar. All sounds come from max msp which has been trained using machine learning on open guitar strings and various pitches. Max Msp/wekinator is listening to e. gtr and responding as it was trained to do. This makes for an interesting improvisation enviroment.

Slightly more info here: https://www.kelleysheehan.com/othermachines

Other Machines

Creating a deep, visceral response in listeners lies at the heart of my compositional output, taking the form of chamber music or solos written for live musicians, multichannel fixed audio pieces, or multimedia installations that marry homemade and self-processed video with experimental electronic music. This work carves a niche in the current musical landscape, blending the uncanny and strange into something wholly unique.

As a performer-composer who works across musical genres and as a visual artist, I have become acutely aware of the importance of flexibility and combining influences from a variety of styles. My own compositions not only marry timbres and sonic material from jazz, noise rock, experimental electronica, and contemporary classical musical styles, but my process has been greatly inspired by the creative methods outlined in Andre Breton’s manifestos of surrealism. I strive to develop my works with these methods in mind, which include collage and automatic writing, among many others.
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I translate these techniques from their visual and literary counterparts to the audio world in order to accurately capture the spirit of creation of each method. For example, in lieu of traditional collage, I incorporate sonic quotations using electronic samples taken from television or radio advertisement or notated phrases lifted from famous operas or orchestral works that live musicians can realize. For notated works, I use graphic notation and non-standard musical notation to encourage the performers to improvise, creating the same spontaneous feeling in a live performance as automatic writing generates in literature.

In addition to using surrealist creation techniques in a sonic context, experimental and generative coding techniques inform the vast majority of my installation work and electronic music. I actively code in the computer language Supercollider and use the flexibility of the language to create works that give the computer agency to make creative decisions. I accomplish this through the use of neural networks and parameters that rely on randomness to give my pieces a sense of life that otherwise not be heard in a fixed installation. This form of music creation not only provides the audience with a distinct sound world full of unheard timbres that have never before been heard, but can also marry the above listed surrealist techniques into an electronic context.

My work blends elements of violence and absurdity that jar the listener. It is visceral, unrelenting, and captures the grotesque essence of the modern world in which we live.

Snow Looks Like Cigarette Ash

Erich Barganier

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