It was recorded live in Berlin in 1975 but not released until 1982. Moonshine Cathodic Dervishes represents a continuation of the cadenza-like improvisations conceived by Riley Persian Surgery Dervishesrecorded between 1971 and 1972 in Los Angeles and Paris. The titles of both albums, with their reference to the swirling fans of Sufism, offer a sense of the swirling movements of the music, a blur of knotted figures and motifs spread across the left and right hands. On both albums, he used a Yamaha YC 45D electric instrument whose signal was routed through a complex delay chain, and in both cases, the instrument was modified to play with only intonation, a tuning system whose bright, wide-open intervals sound faint foreign to listeners accustomed to the egalitarian temperament of Western music.
Trying to clarify specific differences between them Moonshine Cathodic Dervishes and Persian Surgery Dervishes it's a bit like comparing a single stretch of river in different weather conditions. But where the keyboard in the 1971-72 concerts is warm and glowing, with an almost church-like cast, Moonshine Cathodic Dervishes it strikes a more unsettling note, fragile and occasionally buzzing with tones. Riley's chords feel subtly distorted, bent out of shape. Listening to the way certain chords seem to move away from the root, I imagine magnetic fields at work. In places, the reed-like instrument's tone sounds almost medieval, conjuring images of felt-hatted pipers in cobbled city squares, even though Riley's repertoire of polyrhythmic and melodic figures has its roots in the ragas he studied in India with the classical singer Pandit. Pran Nath.
“It's not rocket science,” Riley said of his technique. But even if you know the nuts and bolts of how he made the music, it's hard to parse the underlying mechanisms. You might be able to pinpoint the slap delay, but any attempt to decipher which hand is playing what, or which phrases are the result of tape as opposed to real-time playback, is futile. The Yamaha instrument's distinctive features, with its two manuals, multiple registers and tone control levers, lend shape-shifting timbres. Riley is an extremely skilled player even without using effects. Listening to him here, equipped with what for the time was a new and high-tech setup, it's hard to tell that only two hands are responsible for everything coming from the speakers, without overdubs.
Throughout the album's 51 minutes, the music is constantly evolving. Slow, contemplative melodies subtly morph into frozen treble cascades and return to bassy grooves. Sweetly concordant harmonies suddenly congeal, spewing sour, muddled dissonance. Rattles indicate angelic agreements. Occasionally, a gradual hum anticipates the tubular glow of early Oneohtrix Point Never. Yet all these changes happen quite seamlessly, and with something approaching bliss. During this time, Riley played all-night gigs, giving him an even richer canvas to experiment with his psychedelic ambient ideas. Moonshine Cathodic Dervishes it also feels like a snapshot of a much larger continuum, a brief fragment of the infinite rendered in the most compelling terms. One of the central motifs, a rising and falling four-note figure, is almost childlike. I imagine a five-year-old's song question – “Are we there?” – repeats over and over as the scenery blurs past the backseat windows. The pleasure, of course, is in the journey. the joy of Riley's piece is in postponing the final destination as long as possible.
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