Ryan Carter: On a Better Filtering Algorithm

Ryan Carter’s musical imagination is characterized by its sensitivity to the sound world of electronics, even when – as here – he is writing for acoustic instruments. In the pieces collected on his first album, Chamber Works (0015048KAI), the influence of technology manifested itself as interruption and challenge. The compositions on this album, by contrast, take up technological themes in the spirit of sublimation and resolution. Bit Rot, for example, a composition that explicitly addresses technical failure, is plaintive, even elegiac in tone. This orientation to the presence and potential of technology invites the listener to consider the continuity between the digital mechanisms that pervade everyday life and the much older, peculiarly musical technologies that organize these works.