Discreet Music

• 1. Discreet Music

On the 40th anniversary of the release of Brian Eno’s electronic ambient masterpiece Discreet Music, ContaQt weighs in with an arrangement by percussionist Jerry Pergolesi that harks back to the adventurous experimentalism of the original. In ContaQt’s version, acoustic and electric instruments (cello, violin, soprano saxophone, guitar, double bass, vibraphone, piano, flute, and gongs) take the place of Eno’s EMS synthesizer, channeling the underlying melodies of the piece until the ensemble itself becomes a kind of “looping apparatus,” as Pergolesi describes it. “My hope is that this recording pays homage to an influential piece of music and fulfills its own purpose as, in Eno’s words, ‘not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things... but actually a process of apprehending that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct. Music is something your mind does.’”

"a mild and melancholy meditation into the process of music-making" – Maggie Molloy, Second Inversion