by Mike Telin

“I became interested in electronic music around the age of thirteen,” recalls Sheffield (UK) based multidisciplinary artist Mark Fell. “At the time there was a movement in England called new romantics, which was kind of like synthpop with groups like the Human League and Soft Cell.”

On Wednesday, November 13 beginning at 7:30 pm, CMA Concerts at Transformer Station presents Mark Fell in what he calls an “ambisonic” work that uses thirty-two channels of analogue synthesis that goes from the border of silence to the other extreme. “It’s an immersive experience, but I’m struggling to think of a name for it,” he told us by telephone from EMPAC at Rensselaer in Troy, New York.

Fell, who is known for combining popular music styles with computer-based compositions — with a particular emphasis on algorithmic and mathematical systems — says he developed the concept for the piece this past summer in Stockholm. “The studio I was working in had these big analogue modular synthesizers and what I did was to record a lot of very basic tonal material from the static oscillators, lots of variations of this very simple thing. The piece that I am doing in Cleveland uses thirty-two of these oscillators.” [Read more…]