Malhaus

Malhaus is an audio book based on a short story by Greg Fox. The music was developed alongside the words. This is the "Construction Kit" version of "Malhaus", which is a project I made in March 2006 with the Internet Archive in mind. It's my attempt at furthering a model of "open source audio" in which the end-user compiles a unique instance of "the piece" for themselves rather than having composer/performers dictate the exact nature of what's to be heard. It's similar to the old 60s idea of aleatory music, except instead of choices for performers, here the raw materials are presented to the audience, who then make their own "definitive to me" version of the piece. Ready-made versions are also available since many listeners won't have the urge to involve themselves in that level of customisation. However the choice is now there. This is the first of several collections of "components" which I'll be posting this year. I'm not going to work this way ALL the time, but it will be something I stay interested in for a while yet. I hope this model of new music will be of interest to some of you.

The instruments in this recording are all sampled (ie. sound-fonts) - this makes the composition process much quicker, enables 'impossible' ideas and specific manipulation of timing, and hopefully is drastically different to what 'normally' happens with sampled sound (ie. rhythmic stability, sequenced music, etc.)

The guiding principles of the piece are somewhere between Xenakis' macro-control of probabilities and Henze's "order out of chaos".

ONLINE COMPLETE AT ARCHIVE.ORG - download for free in MP3, FLAC or OGG format.

The DVD-ROM is £15 anywhere in the world.