Compressions & Rarefactions

2015 release including digital download. Compressions & Rarefactions is the fourth solo release on 12k from New Yorker Kenneth Kirschner, who is widely known for epic-length compositions that challenge the forms of modern composition. The album is released as a single CD with a digital download of over five hours of additional music that couldn't be realized within the time constraints of the CD format. Also included is a booklet of essays on Kirschner's music from Marc Weidenbaum, Simon Cummings, Mike Lazarev and renowned visual artist Kysa Johnson, who was also responsible for the album's artwork. Kirschner's title, Compressions & Rarefactions, refers most directly to the physics of sound: the pressure waves in air that are the physical component underlying what we perceive as sound. This concept finds an evocative parallel in the art by Johnson, whose work is about visualizing the imperceptibly tiny physical phenomena that make up everything around us. The title can also be related to the compositions themselves: this is music that alternates between extreme density and extreme sparsity, using those contrasts as a major expressive element as they alternate like waves of pressure and absence in air. Finally, the title also evokes the very long durations of several of the pieces on the album, including two that stretch to over two hours in length.