American Music Review

Vol. XLIX, Issue 2, Spring 2020

By Dominic Coles

score, two places at the level of the voltage

“Because, indeed, isn’t ‘blurred’ just another word for ‘connection’?”
—Tracy McMullen

two places at the level of the voltage emphasizes connections between recordings made in Kolkata and New York City through their participation in a shared electrical field. Heard as containers for discrete conceptions of place and home, these recordings are reduced to their most foundational logic: disruptions in air which are converted into electrical impulses through the mechanics of the microphone. These electrical impulses become the primary material of the piece: once reduced to their electrical forms, these recordings of disparate places become indistinguishable from one another, participating in a shared and fluid field of electricity.