Let’s think about time. Do we visualize time as a line that links past to present to future? Is it like a musical score that starts at bar 1 and ends on the last page, or the timeline on your streaming app, moving from left to right?

Now let’s think about time as a circle… like the circle that the Earth makes around the sun (a year) or in rotation (a day). The hands of a clock make circles of 60sec, 1hr, and 12hr. Seasons, moon phases, tides, life cycles… birth, death, birth, and that sort of thing.

These were things I was mulling over at an artist residency in Vermont when I spotted a pro-recycling tote bag that proclaimed in cheery letters “Everything old is new again!”. I was there working on a piece where all the music derived from a single melody. The piece, “Everything Again Is New”, was later recorded by an ensemble of flute, trumpet, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello. I took the individual tracks from this recording, chopped them up into shorter audio files (samples), and – in another nod to recycling and renewal – made new algorithmic compositions from the samples using the live coding software TidalCycles. In keeping with a strict economy of materials, no other sounds were used.

For me, coding is an elegant way of creating musical patterns in time using the circle/cycle as the organizing principle. Conceptually, it is perhaps more similar to the design of a woven rug than a written score.

About the album

Everything Again Is New is an album of algorithmic electronic music and contemporary classical music built around the concepts of recycling and renewal. The title piece was written for and recorded by the ensemble yMusic. All the material was generated from a single melody. The following seven tracks were composed and performed in the open-source coding environment TidalCycles using samples from yMusic's ensemble of flute, clarinet, trumpet, and string trio exclusively. A meta exploration of cyclical regeneration, Everything Again Is New is a product of and a reaction to the constraints imposed by the pandemic.

"A fascinating exploration of electronic music and classical traditions... An exciting listen for fans of experimental music and those curious about the intersection of live coding and classical influences." – Electronica (UK)

Released Dec, 2024 on the collection "Les Mains Invisibles" from Lyon-based label Adieu Berthe.