HOLLYWOOD - fluxrecords.com is pleased to present Frank Rothkamm's XENA/7.8 (In Memoriam Iannis Xenakis), three days after the death of French composer, architect and mathematician Iannis Xenakis.

"Current post-techno and micro-sound trends are probably just footnotes to Xenakis' work", remarks Rothkamm.

XENA/7.8 is written by the 2000 version of the computer language IFORM which lets him steer random processes. "This is more like setting the thermostat in a home", notes Rothkamm. "You hear streams of pure random events and you tune them until you find a comfortable setting".

Frank Rothkamm first developed IFORM while implementing a knockoff of Xenakis' UPIC computer system for a geodesic dome, the home of Science World in British Columbia. The system allowed anybody to draw anything on a computer screen and have the results turned into music. "They had to hire a security guard, because kids would come up enormously interested in writing all kinds of obscenities to turn into sound. The legacy that Xenakis started was this kind of computer work using probability, with unpredictable random events. Risky as it may be, it's this freedom that should be a guide today."

XENA/7.8 lasts for 7.8 minutes which equals 7 minutes and 48 seconds. Xenakis was 78 years old when he died. The notation of the title follows the convention Xenakis himself used in ST/10-1,080262.

A final remark? "I was mixing a track when I got the news of Xenakis' passing. With this in mind I did the final mix and then named the track in his memory. This is uncertain music for uncertain times".

 

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