Duane Pitre

★★★★★ Omniscient Voices

IMPREC. DL/LP

The New Orleans sound artist returns with a stunning work for piano and electronics.

Fans of such contemporary minimalist composers as Kali Malone or Caterina Barbieri will likely have encountered Duane Pitre. His 2009 compilation, The Harmonic

Series, reintroduced the ancient tuning pattern of just intonation – previously associated with ’60s/70s ‘minimalists’ like La Monte Young and Terry Riley – to this new generation of young musicians. Since 2012’s Feel Free album, Pitre has combined traditional acoustic with modern electronic ‘improvisation’ and this new work, influenced by New York composer Morton Feldman’s use of tonal clusters, is the latest result. Although composed of five pieces of varying lengths, offering more harmonic variety, this remains a complete, immersive work, a blissful pulsing conversation between the organic and the electronic that is simultaneously amorphous yet distinct.

It’s hard to know where you are in the record other than to know that you feel warm and safe and that when it’s over you need to play it again.