DBS & ZAUM: Music for Dance and Physical Theater.
 

The music for Double Blind Sided (DBS) is full of reference and quotation. The primary musical reference in the piece is to Mussorgky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Each scene is based on a different movement from that work. Quotations from Afghan folk songs and American patriotic music are also to be found.  In Zaum: Beyond Significance the music harkens back in style to the music of early modernism. References to Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Schoenberg can be heard. The sound world for the piece revolves around an ensemble of multiple pianos and percussion. This ensemble was inspired by George Antheil's work, Ballet Mecanique. Zaum also contains passages reminiscent of musique concrete. In musique concrete, sound is first recorded on a magnetic tape, or a vinyl disc, and then manipulated, processed and edited. Early experiments in musique contrete by the french composer Pierre Schaffer are particularly appealing. Schaffer's use of piano sounds in many of these early pieces is particularly charming. Many of the piano sounds in Zaum were created using musique concrete techniques.

From Double Blind Sided, Finale: Civil War, exceprt.