Still and Moving Lines : CD

This album featuresDecibel performing four works by important American composper Alvin Lucier, three of which had been previously unrecorded. Ever Present (2002), the only work offered here that has been recorded before is for flute, saxophone, and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator and is considered by many to be Lucier’s most ‘musical ‘ of his ouvre.

Carbon Copies (1989) is for saxophone, piano, flute and playback; the work investigates musicians imitating their environments.

Hands (1994) is for organ with four players. The performers use their hands to subtly alter the harmonics produced from the pipes of an organ.

Shelter (1967) is for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space and finds Lucier offering the sounds of outside a performance space.

All these works demonstrate Alvin Lucier’s fertile mind and exploring, experimental sensibility.Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire and passed away in 2021. 

Lucier has pioneered in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers’ physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space.

Decibel presented a monograph performance of Lucier’s work in 2010, which was then toured Australia wide to celebrate the composers 80th birthday. This included works such as  Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields) (1990), Sounds form the Bridge (1978), In Memorium Jon Higgins (1994) and the pieces featured here.

In 2025, Decibel performed Carbon Copies at Revivification, an installation generating sound using Lucier’s invitro cells.  Lucier collaborator James Fei joined the group for this performance, which was followed by a short improvisation inside the installation.

This release is packaged in a folded package of 11” x 17” card type stock paper,  inserted into re-sealable plastic sleeves. There is no jewel case or tray card. There is a bar code. It is released on the US label Pogus. You can find reviews on thier web site here.