Ian Drennan is a composer — and structural engineer — based in New York City. With Me My Imp, his fourth full-length release, Drennan guides the listener into a world poised between the concrete compromises of engineering and the ephemeral possibilities of digital sound. It asks us: are we really are in control? And do we need to bother?

Me My Imp blends field recordings and instrumentation into a haunting yet low-key sound collage. Blurring the distinction between musical and non-musical styles, the album’s thirteen tracks snake through bright strings, zither, and flute sound, with jarring doses of intrusive scrapes, radio transmissions, and air-raid synths. Me My Imp revels in the stretching and squeezing of opposites: digital and acoustic; composition and collage; soundtrack and dialog.

Drennan draws inspiration from Samuel Beckett’s radio plays, read by Irish actor Jack MacGowran, whose dry, excoriating diction is pepped by organs, flutes, and gongs. With Me My Imp, each sound takes on a life of its own, becoming actors in a drama for which Drennan has provided the stage. Drennan’s collection of sounds is, as Beckett’s work has been described, a theatre of the absurd — a stridulation of serenity and menace that somehow, absurdly, adds up to equilibrium.

And equilibrium is the business of engineers. Drennan shows us the hidden benevolence in the random nature of our world, which despite its multifariousness, actually works. Rather than build a new world, Drennan exposes the infinity in our own — whether we are a cricket or a tormented demon, we are all just caught up in the mix.

© 2020 Soap Library // www.soaplibrary.net

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Ian Drennan — Me My Imp (SL009)

MEMYIMP

Ian Drennan — A

Ian Drennan — Ixion

Ian Drennan is a composer — and structural engineer — based in New York City. With Me My Imp, his fourth full-length release, Drennan guides the listener into a world poised between the concrete compromises of engineering and the ephemeral possibilities of digital sound. It asks us: are we really are in control? And do we need to bother?

Me My Imp blends field recordings and instrumentation into a haunting yet low-key sound collage. Blurring the distinction between musical and non-musical styles, the album’s thirteen tracks snake through bright strings, zither, and flute sound, with jarring doses of intrusive scrapes, radio transmissions, and air-raid synths. Me My Imp revels in the stretching and squeezing of opposites: digital and acoustic; composition and collage; soundtrack and dialog.

Drennan draws inspiration from Samuel Beckett’s radio plays, read by Irish actor Jack MacGowran, whose dry, excoriating diction is pepped by organs, flutes, and gongs. With Me My Imp, each sound takes on a life of its own, becoming actors in a drama for which Drennan has provided the stage. Drennan’s collection of sounds is, as Beckett’s work has been described, a theatre of the absurd — a stridulation of serenity and menace that somehow, absurdly, adds up to equilibrium.

And equilibrium is the business of engineers. Drennan shows us the hidden benevolence in the random nature of our world, which despite its multifariousness, actually works. Rather than build a new world, Drennan exposes the infinity in our own — whether we are a cricket or a tormented demon, we are all just caught up in the mix.

©2020 Soap Library // www.soaplibrary.net