[serious mode on]
With the aim of exploring possible conciliations between the spontaneity or potential for change, variation and development of musical ideas, which he had come to know as a child through piano and classical repertoire, and an emphatically repetitive approach to musical form and expression that we usually associate with “electronics” –regardless of the stylistic heterogeneity that we find under this broad label–, David Herradón’s live work as cosmic lithium is heavily founded on improvisation, on randomness –via the arbitrary use of too many cassette tapes to keep track of–, and on the superimposition of overwhelming loop libraries: primordial repetitive bits, and smallest musical building blocks the machines have at hand, to be expanded, twisted or distorted from the simple, transparent or intelligible to the complex, irregular or asymmetrical.
The impossibility to replicate the superimposition of multiple layers of loops along with the random selection of cassettes enforce, indeed, the formal singularity of each live performance. Consequently, David Herradón never pre-programs a setlist before a performance or rehearsal: given all the material he has at his disposal, he is very much drawn to the challenge of shaping the sequence of pieces and fragments to be performed in real time, taking into account what he is playing at that very moment, where he intends to go, and the technical or aesthetic mishaps that certainly arise during the live performance itself.
More generally, beneath the aesthetic surface of cosmic lithium’s music –whether glitch, noise, ambient, etc.–, and beyond this aforementioned interest in reconciling two seemingly but still usually contrasted spheres of music –development versus repetition, movement versus stasis, formal integrity (even when one engages in an aesthetic that implies the fragmentation of discourse, such as glitch) versus arbitrariness in the arrangement of musical material–, his background in classical repertoire and classical piano prevails, and manifests itself in equally classical compositional concerns. These concerns are, among others: color and harmonic richness, which enables and stimulates the design of large-scale tonal plans; a holistic conception of musical form, each parameter controlled by the composer in necessary and constant dialogue with every other parameter; directionality of discourse, based on the classical dialectic of tension-release at the small scale; expressive and emotional variety, etc. In essence, against a musical climate, which has persisted for decades now, of often celebrating timbre and soundscape immersion above all else, David Herradón’s music seeks to champion classical structures from and beyond loop music.
[serious mode off]
cosmic lithium :) 