Better known as one of the two guitar-wielding twins in The National, Bryce Dessner is also something of a nouveau classical whizz, who has written work for everyone from the Kronos Quartet to the Sydney Opera House. This time, Dessner was commissioned by New York’s Carnegie Hall and has called upon like-minded souls, So Percussion, a Brooklyn quartet known to make beautiful noise from ‘instruments’ as diverse as aluminium pipes and an amplified cactus. Surely they should be working with Tom Waits?
On paper, the project does pretty much what it says on the cover, as Dessner’s compositions combine percussion and strings over the course of nine tracks, but there’s one big difference. Rather than use conventional guitars or violins, Dessner roped in instrument builder Aron Sanchez and together, they created the chordstick – a cross between a hammer dulcimer and an electric guitar.
Here’s the science bit: the four chordsticks are strung with eight strings and tuned to two open chords, so that the So Percussionists can wallop them with mallets, stroke them with bows or pluck with pencils, either sounding individual strings or chords, while the bass instrument has a fretted string for those deep bass drones.
The end result is a beautiful 35 minutes, split into nine sections, that in the main alternate between slowly ululating short pieces, building up a veritable rainforest of tautness and tension, which is then released in longer, more lively affairs. On ‘Section 3’, Dessner brings something of a conventional rock sensibility to the unorthodox arrangement, although its mid-section breaks down into eerie symphonics, before its glorious blend of plucked strings and percussion combine for a truly joyous finale. Then there’s the madcap ‘Section 5’, which sounds like Rodrigo y Gabriela covering Slayer, with a troupe of woodpeckers in the background, or the sparse and almost electronic feel of ‘Section 6’, and the restrained, pensive closing section. All in all, a refreshingly original collection from a seriously talented composer.