eMusic Review 0
In his performances as DJ/rupture, Jace Clayton has been part of that experimental breed of DJ/producers who draw on the sounds of the classical avant-garde. But while names like Edgard Varese, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen have become hip in DJ culture, Clayton has turned to one of music’s true outliers, the gay African-American composer Julius Eastman. (Both his sexual orientation and race figure prominently in his titles.) The Julius Eastman Memorial Depot is neither a mash-up nor a straight remix. It is a recasting and reimagining of two of Eastman’s most important and defining works, “Evil Nigger” and “Gay Guerrilla,” both originally for four pianos but arranged here for two pianos and live electronics. And it is a remarkable, heartfelt tribute to a man who was a fixture on the New York “downtown” scene in the ’70s and ’80s, performing with Meredith Monk and singing the lead role in Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs For a Mad King before succumbing to alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness and death at the age of 49.
“Evil Nigger, Part 1″ is almost pretty, with the layered chiming of its minimalist pianos; Part 2 abruptly switches to a more obviously electronic sound; Part 3… read more »
