This CD presents five wonderfully crafted and entertaining computer music compositions by this innovative composer. Idle Chatter Junior (1999) employs short words and word fragments that bounce across the stereo space in rhythmic unison with sampled piano, drums, Latin percussion, and sustained synthesizer chords in a jolly, somewhat frantic salsa. The whole is quite danceable and hints at the illusion of the sound of musical instruments coming out of one's mouth, as well as words...an elevated Gerald McBoing- Boing syndrome. The sustained chords become more heavenly as the piece progresses. Ride (2000) digitally shadows masses of cars passing on a road journey, taking the dynamic envelopes of those sounds to create and stimulate sustained harmonies of great synthetic beauty, together with additional synthesizers and quasi-random vibraphones and memories of conversations. Driving must be next to heaven on Earth for composer
Lansky. The charming and nostalgic Looking Back (1996) is "basically a foggy processing of me singing the school song" of the High School of Music and Art in New York City..."we all knew the tune...but few of the words." Heavy Set (1998) is a lickety-split, breakneck speed, computer-driven work realized with the sound of a sampled piano and sustained computer sounds that provide the harmonic bed. Sometimes only the harmonies that are like internal and eternal impressions left after the frantic physicality has nearly disappeared are heard, or the feeling left after the concert is over. Dancetracks: Remix (1997) is made from a computer sequencing program that drives gentle percussion and synthesizer harmonies that underscore a beautiful guitar improvisation by
Steve Mackey, at times bluesy, gamelan-like, balladic, odd.