Michael Pisaro's Music

While snow was piling up high silently outside, in February 2010, I have been listening to Michael Pisaro and Barry Chabala's new cassette tape work "black, white, red, green, blue," and Pisaro's two CDs from Edition Wandelweiser, "Hearing Metal 1" and "An Unrhymed Chord" all day long. This experience of music completely carried me to another world.

Michael Pisaro's compositions have a characteristic ambience, in which the subtle unnoticeable fluctuation of sounds go along with spacious tempos which give you a feeling that the flow of time is somewhat ambiguous. While the silence and sounds crossover slowly, the fluctuation of sounds, often noted as sine tones, occasionally causes a hallucination as if you were drawn into a different space where different stretch of time is surrounding. It feels as if the altitude and atmosphere pressure were slowly changing around you, while giving you a pleasant wave of dizziness.

This sense of dizziness, with a feeling that time seems to be stretched differently, is similar to how I feel when I listen to John Tilbury's piano solo works. However, while Tilbury's sense of ‘dizziness’ surges rather overwhelmingly like a dramatic wave, Pisaro's sense of ‘dizziness’ approaches more naturally and calmly, without any pressure. I am interested in listening to Pisaro's other works, too. It has been a long time since the last time when I truly thought 'This music is great' for some artists' works, so I am very glad.

As I recall, when I read Haruki Murakami's novel ('Pinball, 1973') for the first time in my college days, I experienced a feeling that the quality of air surrounding me has completely changed from what was there before, after I finished the book. It was as if the old heavy stagnant air was purified instantly with negative ions or something, and it felt like that the sounds of wind and the scent of air were refreshed and became purely transparent. Michael Pisaro's music had a similar effect on me. After I finished listening to some of his music, I still felt as if the environmental noises around me were parts of his music for a while. Sounds of cars passing by outside the window, heater's and humidifier's noises in a house, quiet low noises generated from my computer, etc. - all of the noises blended nicely together like symphonic music. In the air that was rather chaotic before, there was a newborn tranquility and harmony. It was a very rare, valuable experience to me. If there is some music that is born in a pure white state free from ego, this could be the music.