stefan goldmann: tacit script

Tacit Script builds its own network of interdependent grids in which sound objects move and thrive along multiple dimensions. All frequencies fall into custom scales, developed individually for each track and generated by bending the standard chromatic system. Most electronically produced music operates with a 1V per octave tuning which is divided into 12 equally spaced steps, equivalent to the piano keyboard. Stefan Goldmann skews or stretches this variable in order to achieve different microtonal spacings, wider or narrower, thus eliminating the octave -- commonly a fixture in most music. Intervals might thus be at 75 or 110 or 138% of their "regular" ratio. Melodic objects then traverse these unfamiliar spectral structures, singing electric songs with alien voices. Divergent metric layers drift apart, only to be pulled back together at critical points. Clearly pulsed elements hammer out persistent patterns, yet complex polymetric friction persists over long stretches of time. Alternating continuous sweeps and abrupt shifts through wavetables define the highly synthetic, yet organically developing timbres of Tacit Script. Relentless repetition is the force which yields coherent composite shapes in this setting. The results are emphatically in the realm of techno -- what is being pushed forward are the interrelations of its constituent layers. The music in this album is derived from works originally commissioned for the five-hour music theater work ALIF, as premiered at Berlin's MaerzMusik Festival of 2016. Revised from 2017 to 2019 for the album format, the works herein are an excellent representation of Stefan Goldmann's ongoing investigation of the wider potentials of techno.