Tristan Perich's albums aren't really like anyone else's. Since 2004, the Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist has been housing them in CD jewel cases, but that's about all they have in common with more traditional musical releases.Perich uses his background in computer science to craft objects that are a little more special than your average LP, coding complex compositions onto a microchip with a headphone jack and connecting them with a series of wires, switches, and dials to a battery, which powers the whole operation to read and run in real-time. To listen, you plug a pair of ⅛" headphones into the jack and flick the on-switch to the right.
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The ensuing path is delightfully different for each album—2006's 1-Bit Music tumbles through kaleidoscopic, caffeinated melodies 2010's 1-Bit Symphony plays like a sophisticated orchestra wrangled out of digital static, and July's Noise Patterns is a testament to the physical power of digital crackles and pops. But each of those latter two pieces ends the same way, with a movement in which the run-time is listed as "∞"; in practice, that means the code repeats unabated until you cut the power off.Back when Perich conceived of these releases, the rise of file-sharing and music downloading was calling the future of physical releases into question. "It had been a few years since I moved my entire music library to MP3s and downloaded [an equal] amount off of Hotline or Napster or Limewire," he said during a September visit to his Williamsburg studio. "There was this feeling of music becoming more ephemeral, and I was really excited by that."So he decided to move in the opposite direction, and start making albums that were unapologetically physical. Looking at these jewel cases, you're confronted, first, with their tactile existence, and then with the mechanisms of their playback. It's a far cry from pressing play on the latest Tidal exclusive.Littered around Perich's studio are a series of machine-generated drawings, a few copies of his microchip albums, and a to-do list scrawled on a whiteboard; there's little that hints at his background as a classical composer. For a years, he says, he was too intimidated by the boundless possibilities inherent in electronic synthesis to even begin integrating it into his work. "I was just really into acoustic instruments," he says. "I didn't have anything to latch onto in electronic music. It was too abstract." Perich had grown up listening to Aphex Twin and Autechre, but it wasn't until he started tinkering with simple microchips and microcontrollers in school that he realized that there might be a way for him to integrate the rawness of 1-bit electronic sound (think early video game music, but grittier) into his practice.
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In the time since, he's crafted these three album-length compositions on circuit boards and started integrating electronics into pieces for saxophone and violin, among other more traditional instruments. By intertwining digital and acoustic sound, his work asks questions about what constitutes classical composition and live sound in an era that seems to prize instantly available digital recordings above all else. Over some days-old kiwi sitting on a table in his studio, Perich took some time to muse on the genesis of his microchip music, the strange darkness of his newest album, Noise Patterns, and what it even means to release a physical object as we move closer to a streaming music singularity.
Photo courtesy of the artist
THUMP: You studied math, music, and computer science at school. What was the first project you worked on that really brought together those impulses?
Tristan Perich: It was at some point in college that I started thinking more about video art and kinetic art. That's how I got into working with the hardware side of art and music. When you start to program microcontrollers, anything is possible. You connect [the chips] to one thing or another and then you either have a kinetic sculpture or some sensor on a door or whatever. That led to the music side of stuff. I'd been composing my whole life before that, but I was strictly anti-electronics and computers in music.Why?
As a composer, I was a purist in a way. I grew up playing the piano. Writing for those instruments meant something. One of the premises of electronic sound is that anything is possible. I didn't have anything to latch onto in that, as opposed to physical instruments…
Tristan Perich: It was at some point in college that I started thinking more about video art and kinetic art. That's how I got into working with the hardware side of art and music. When you start to program microcontrollers, anything is possible. You connect [the chips] to one thing or another and then you either have a kinetic sculpture or some sensor on a door or whatever. That led to the music side of stuff. I'd been composing my whole life before that, but I was strictly anti-electronics and computers in music.Why?
As a composer, I was a purist in a way. I grew up playing the piano. Writing for those instruments meant something. One of the premises of electronic sound is that anything is possible. I didn't have anything to latch onto in that, as opposed to physical instruments…
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You know what a piano is and isn't supposed to do.
And you don't expect it to do something that isn't supposed to do. It's identity is wrapped up in its structure and hardware. I think there's so much to say for that limited sound palette—which also brings with it those musicians who play those instruments and who have spent their whole lives learning them. I like that whole infrastructure, even though it's kind of contrived or forced maybe. But at the same time, it really means something in the face of digital audio and streaming music. Our interest in live sound has new meaning in that context.Where did the idea to physically release these albums in jewel cases come from?
That was 2004. I was a super early adopter of those ridiculous early MP3 players. They were huge, and the batteries only lasted 45 minutes or whatever. It could store a lot of music. Because of that transition, we were all thinking about how music was becoming more ephemeral. It wasn't not an object anymore.So I can make a commentary [on that] by putting music out in the exact same packaging, but you open it up and it's its own player. That's the only way you can hear it— by jacking in and turning it on. As a listener, you're more aware of how the circuit is working and how it's powered and everything.Was it intended as a criticism of that ephemerality then? It sounds like you were pretty optimistic about that shift.
As a composer, I'm interested in sound and how sound is made. This was just a way to bring that to electronic sound—to make music that was electronic music but had this kind of physical meaning. I think you can be interested in the polar opposites of something.
And you don't expect it to do something that isn't supposed to do. It's identity is wrapped up in its structure and hardware. I think there's so much to say for that limited sound palette—which also brings with it those musicians who play those instruments and who have spent their whole lives learning them. I like that whole infrastructure, even though it's kind of contrived or forced maybe. But at the same time, it really means something in the face of digital audio and streaming music. Our interest in live sound has new meaning in that context.Where did the idea to physically release these albums in jewel cases come from?
That was 2004. I was a super early adopter of those ridiculous early MP3 players. They were huge, and the batteries only lasted 45 minutes or whatever. It could store a lot of music. Because of that transition, we were all thinking about how music was becoming more ephemeral. It wasn't not an object anymore.So I can make a commentary [on that] by putting music out in the exact same packaging, but you open it up and it's its own player. That's the only way you can hear it— by jacking in and turning it on. As a listener, you're more aware of how the circuit is working and how it's powered and everything.Was it intended as a criticism of that ephemerality then? It sounds like you were pretty optimistic about that shift.
As a composer, I'm interested in sound and how sound is made. This was just a way to bring that to electronic sound—to make music that was electronic music but had this kind of physical meaning. I think you can be interested in the polar opposites of something.
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I have nothing against music being ephemeral. I listen to music on my iPhone all the time. The only record player I have is a crappy USB record player that my mom gave me a number of years ago. Noise Patterns and 1-Bit Symphony and all my other releases are also available digitally. It's so annoying to me when people do a cassette-only release with like 50 copies or something. The music shouldn't be bound by a limitation. If the music can be reproduced digitally because it's just sound that you play through headphones or speakers or whatever, then we should all be able to have access to that.That's a cool thing about these circuit releases, because all they require is a pair of headphones. If you hand it to someone, they'll likely be able to listen to it.
Except that as of two days ago, that's no longer true—with the new iPhone coming out that doesn't have a headphone jack. It's one thing if you plug into the lightning port or whatever; there's a wire that's connecting the speakers in your headphones to the player. There's a transmission of a signal to the headphones that's going on there. But when everything goes wireless, that's another protocol. It's another kind of disconnect.Are these albums meant to draw attention to the physical reality of technology then?
Yeah, and that's why the source code is in [the booklet] too. It's an awareness of the systems, the hardware, the electronics, and the code also. Even if you can see the hardware itself, you don't know what's actually happening on that black box. It's the same as anything around us. We might not fully understand how gravity or color or temperature works as laypeople, but we can learn about them. With a lot of electronics, you can't. They're deliberately closed off and proprietary. That's part of this too: making people aware that technology isn't magical.Can you tell me a bit about the sound of Noise Patterns, compared to your past releases? Obviously it's a lot darker. Was the process of making the music similar?
I wrote Noise Patterns the same way I wrote 1-Bit Symphony. The structure is almost exactly the same. It's just the bottom layer—the actual sound synthesis—that's been converted from generating tones to generating random output, based on the same logarithmic pitch system. I realized that they're opposing ends of the spectrum. Tone is very pure, and noise is equally pure at the opposite end. Anything in between is messier. I haven't gotten in there yet, but at least I wanted to try the two polar opposites.You've also been working on integrating electronics with your other composition work. How did that first come about?
When I first made 1-Bit Music, I had a lot of friends in the chiptune music scene. I went to a lot of those shows and I played a lot of those shows too. That was definitely outside of the composer framework. So it took a while for me to realize that I wanted to put [1-bit sounds] onstage with acoustic instruments.Eventually, I wrote this piece for 10 violins and 10-channel speakers. That in my mind was the beginning of the synthesis of these thoughts. The first part is just 10 violins. And then the electronics take over the lines the violins were playing. And then it's a hybrid. The end of that piece settles with a 20-part chord that [the violins and the electronics] play continuously; you can't hear what's a violin and what's 1-bit. The timbres mesh. I thought it was so cool that you couldn't tell between someone who spent their whole life virtuosically perfecting their instrument and the most banal electronic sound.This interview has been edited and condensed for and clarity.
Except that as of two days ago, that's no longer true—with the new iPhone coming out that doesn't have a headphone jack. It's one thing if you plug into the lightning port or whatever; there's a wire that's connecting the speakers in your headphones to the player. There's a transmission of a signal to the headphones that's going on there. But when everything goes wireless, that's another protocol. It's another kind of disconnect.Are these albums meant to draw attention to the physical reality of technology then?
Yeah, and that's why the source code is in [the booklet] too. It's an awareness of the systems, the hardware, the electronics, and the code also. Even if you can see the hardware itself, you don't know what's actually happening on that black box. It's the same as anything around us. We might not fully understand how gravity or color or temperature works as laypeople, but we can learn about them. With a lot of electronics, you can't. They're deliberately closed off and proprietary. That's part of this too: making people aware that technology isn't magical.Can you tell me a bit about the sound of Noise Patterns, compared to your past releases? Obviously it's a lot darker. Was the process of making the music similar?
I wrote Noise Patterns the same way I wrote 1-Bit Symphony. The structure is almost exactly the same. It's just the bottom layer—the actual sound synthesis—that's been converted from generating tones to generating random output, based on the same logarithmic pitch system. I realized that they're opposing ends of the spectrum. Tone is very pure, and noise is equally pure at the opposite end. Anything in between is messier. I haven't gotten in there yet, but at least I wanted to try the two polar opposites.You've also been working on integrating electronics with your other composition work. How did that first come about?
When I first made 1-Bit Music, I had a lot of friends in the chiptune music scene. I went to a lot of those shows and I played a lot of those shows too. That was definitely outside of the composer framework. So it took a while for me to realize that I wanted to put [1-bit sounds] onstage with acoustic instruments.Eventually, I wrote this piece for 10 violins and 10-channel speakers. That in my mind was the beginning of the synthesis of these thoughts. The first part is just 10 violins. And then the electronics take over the lines the violins were playing. And then it's a hybrid. The end of that piece settles with a 20-part chord that [the violins and the electronics] play continuously; you can't hear what's a violin and what's 1-bit. The timbres mesh. I thought it was so cool that you couldn't tell between someone who spent their whole life virtuosically perfecting their instrument and the most banal electronic sound.This interview has been edited and condensed for and clarity.