Hypercube: Brain on Fire

Brain on Fire (New Focus 250; USA) New York based ensemble Hypercube (Erin Rogers, saxes; Jay Sorce, guitars; Andrea Lodge, piano & accordion and Chris Graham, percussion) releases Brain on Fire, including works written for them by Sam Pluta, Philip Schuessler, Erin Rogers, Dennis Sullivan, and Nicholas Deyoe. Building on a growing repertoire anchored by Louis Andriessen's iconic Hout, Hypercube emphasizes the experimental, avant-garde potential of this quartet instrumentation with impressive performances and a cultivated ensemble sound. HYPERCUBE has built a reputation on high-energy performances with impressive execution. The NYC-based quartet embraces the boundaries of chamber music, featuring cutting-edge works for saxophone, guitar, piano and percussion, while spanning electric and acoustic worlds. “Jarring, compelling” (Washington Post) “fearless and flawless… some of the most exciting playing I have ever heard.”

Ms. Erin Rogers plays sax, composes and has a great solo sax disc out on Relative Pitch from a few months ago. She also played a solo set here and made some new fans that night. Ms. Rogers is also a member of this quartet, Hypercube, and she wrote one of the five pieces here. Another piece here was written by Sam Pluta, who also plays electronics and is a member of the Wet Ink Ensemble. Pluta’s piece, America Tokyo Daydream IV, is incredible and reminds me what I like best about modern chamber music when it is filled with surprising twists and turns, each sound carefully placed and tightly connected. Extraordinary and rather Zappa or Zorn-like in the way it keeps shifting dynamics throughout. Another highlight here is Ms. Rogers’ Casino (Remix), which is also explosive and is constantly shifting through various lines all the way through. The other three pieces come from composers I hadn’t heard of before now, but all are equally fascinating. This disc is a bit longer than an hour and I have listened to it in its entirety several times and it just keeps getting better!

— Bruce Gallanter, 6.15.2020

Hypercube is a new ensemble comprised of saxophonist Erin Rogers, electric guitarist Jay Sorce, pianist and accordionist Andrea Lodge, and percussionist Christopher Graham. This is their debut recording, and all five pieces are heard in their recorded premieres. Four were written expressly for the ensemble, while the fifth, Sam Pluta’s American Tokyo Daydream IV (data structures / monoliths), was newly arranged for this album.

Hypercube’s instrumentation looks close to that of a jazz or rock group on paper, and there is a biting rock attitude to the music here, but the group and the composers stretch the orchestrations and timbres to their limits—this is a record that collects all sorts of unexpected and arresting sounds. It’s also at the leading edge of contemporary thinking and practice, the playing as sharp and precise as a scalpel, the music stabbing and exploding in all sorts of directions. It can all seem initially discontinuous until one feels the accumulation of musical ideas building organic, angular, muscular structures in the ears and mind. Dennis Sullivan’s opening under nails and Rogers’ own concluding Casino (Remix) make for a bracing start and a witty conclusion that will have one quickly reaching to hit the PLAY button again.

— George Grella, 6.22.2020

Ensembles playing other people’s compositions don’t often carry the force of personality that a band playing its own music does. Hypercube manages to hit on both counts. They draw from their own (Erin Rogers is on of the five composers here) and own the work of others (Nicholas Deyoe, Sam Pluta, Philip Schuessler, Dennis Sullivan).

— Kurt Gottschalk, 2.10.2021

All of the works on this disc seem to derive from a rather consistent aesthetic perspective. The music is not tonal and reflects an openness to the exploration of a highly imaginative approach to timbre. It is full of unexpected turns, avoiding much in the way of repetitive patterns. I am reminded of what my generation used to call music of the avant-garde. As I reflect on that notion, it seems irrelevant and antiquarian by today’s standards. Yet, without that notion, I am left without a vocabulary to categorize this music. The music is consistent and each work sounds firmly rooted in its own aesthetic expression. While some may find similarities to the work of composers Earle Brown, some of Stockhausen and even Ornette Coleman, I was overwhelmed by what I observed to be the unrelenting intensity in music on this disc. All of the composers seemed very focused on articulation and clearly, based on the consistency of the music, have given their work an immense amount of thought. It brings me back to the days when, as a young composer, I found Karkoschka’s book Notation in New Music a revelation, opening a door to a wide range of innovative possibilities of articulation and instrumental techniques. Clearly, these days I rarely encounter music of this sort where there is such focus on such a diversity in articulation. As an attentive reader can tell, I am having a great deal of difficulty trying to convey any sense of this music.

under nails by Dennis Sullivan has a ghostly, nightmarish quality to it. The music is highly Pointillistic, without any traditional sense of line. I was unable to discern a form or structure to the piece. Yet, somehow, the music had an odd sense of continuity to it. As disjointed as it is, it held my attention. There are fleeting moments of consonance and reflection. The music is very troubling, taxing to the ear, and at times seems very sad and empty. It requires a very open mind and attentive listening if one is to derive any communication from it.

The music of Sam Pluta was only slightly more conventional. Many will hear only instrumental “screams” and the pounding of instruments. It is music full of anger. As with the music of Sullivan, it did not evince any particular form or shape. However, the music displays sufficient contrast that I came away with some sense of a musical argument.

Philip Schuessler’s Liminal Bridges is probably the most accessible work offered. I did not have that much trouble in finding a sense of a protracted musical expression. There are moments of repose which provided this listener with some focus.

With its use of microtones at the beginning, the work of Nicholas Deyoe has a seductive quality to it. It is a curious mixture of what is, at times, music that is very sensitive, almost Impressionistic versus music of extreme dissonance. I found the music troubling and yet very haunting.

The work by Erin Rogers was very direct in its expression. The music conveyed to me a great sense of power and an attention to detail. The dissonance was rather consistently without relief. I wondered if there was not some intent to shock or confound a listener.

Hypercube consists of Erin Rogers, saxophones; Jay Sorce, electric guitar; Andrea Lodge, piano and accordion, and Christopher Graham, percussion. Not having any scores, it is impossible to respond, with any certainty, as to the accuracy of the performance. Yet what I heard sounded very convincing and displayed an immense attention to expression. All of the works are highly complex and would require great virtuosity, dedication, and concentration on the part of each player. Clearly all of the performers seem up to the task. These are remarkable musicians. The recorded sound has an excellent immediacy to it, a sound quality which seemed completely appropriate to the intensity of the music.

— Karl F. Miller, 9.15.2020

First, before anything is said about the release at hand, let’s clear up what Hypercube is. If you go searching on Bandcamp you’re likely to run across Hypercube, a London computer-based musician named Rodrigo Passannanti, with over two dozen releases to his credit, but that is not this Hypercube. For the purposes of this review, Hypercube is a New York City quartet working the extreme boundaries of chamber music, opting for cutting-edge experimental works for sax, guitar, piano, and percussion. Interestingly, four of the five pieces on this, their debut release Brain on Fire, are commisioned pieces by composers outside the group, only the fifth and final piece Casino was written by saxophonist Erin Rogers, the remaining members being Andrea Lodge (piano and accordion), Jay Sorce (guitars), and Chris Graham (percussion), and of course electronic sounds figure into their palette as well. By this time one may be wondering what this all sounds like. The opening thirteen-minute piece Under Nails composed by Dennis Sullivan is an exemplary introduction, a sound that seems to wander freely through the wilds, bursts of percussion punctuating random piano sounds and sax elaborations, fading to black occasionally, sounding almost like a free improvisation at times, but overall the process is too precise to be anything but scored. There’s even a little harmonized vocal bit “...hold on to your” followed by an outburst of distorted electric guitar that happens at roughly seven minutes in, and then again a couple minutes later, amid seemingly random percussive noodling. American Tokyo Daydream IV by composer Sam Pluta takes a more angular approach with higher density melodic sounds, though still many edgy jagged corners still abound. Other compositions include Philip Schuessler's Liminal Bridges and Nicholas Deyoe's They Solidify Then Tilt, each with its own unique character, executed precisely by the ensemble. This collection of avant garde compositions is probably best experienced first hand to be understood, and fortunately Hypercube’s Bandcamp site (link included below) makes that entirely possible.

— Peter Thelen, 7.16.2020

The debut disc by the American ensemble Hypercube documents the groups contribution to the repertoire for their instrumentation: Saxophones (Erin Rogers), electric guitar (Jay Sorce), piano and accordion (Andrea Lodge), and percussion (Christopher Graham). They trace their instrumentation back to Louis Andriessen’s canon Hout.

The first piece is under nails (2016) by composer and percussionist Dennis Sullivan, wherein diverse musical gestures, from mysterious “new music” whisperings to Death Metal vocals to music for cartoons, initially clash through juxtaposition before finding some sort of integration. An interesting facet of Sullivan is that he revels in the imitation of digital sounds by analog instruments (such as crossfades and spacialization). This is disjunct, modern music, but it is curiously approachable through its very zaniness. In the initial stages at least it can go from gesture to gesture without any clue as to what is coming next. The performance has the sort of ferocious concentration one expects from groups who push the envelope (one also thinks in this regard of the London Sinfonietta, Psappha, and the Manchester Collective in the UK). Hypercube seems to set new standards of virtuosity, all in the service of the music it supports.

The memorably named American Tokyo Daydreams IV (data structures/monoliths) of 2007 by Sam Pluta is influenced by the Japanese noise scene and operates in a modular way: chord clusters connected by a variety of glissandos, screeches, and the like. As in the case of the Sullivan, there are some remarkable textures that one would naturally associate with electronic music. There are some fascinating sounds per se: accordion and saxophone multiphonics simultaneously, for example.

Certainly block chords moving around the registers seem to imply gestures inspired by electronic music, as do those multiphonics, while again the pure “noise” of an electric guitar suggests an outside influence. The original scoring of accordion, saxophones, and electric guitar was adapted specially for Hypercube.

A completely different experience emanates from Philip Schuessler’s Liminal Bridges (2016), which begins with a sort of post-Webernian Pointillism. There are discernible arrival points that delineate the structure of this fascinating 11-minute piece, a work rendered fascinating by its elusiveness. Scored for alto saxophone, electric guitar, piano, and percussion, it seems to reveal particular sensitivity to harmonic sonority from the composer; the work’s eventual dissolution is carefully planned and executed.

The longest work on the disc, Nicholas Deyoe’s they solidify then tilt, puts the spotlight on Hypercube’s guitarist Jay Sorce. There’s something of a feint going on here, in that there is a lot of incident, but it feels so very slowly evolving. Notable is the way the composer works with the “beatings” that result from microtone clashes. (Anyone who has played in an amateur orchestra and experienced an unintentional “chromatic unison” with his or her neighbor will know what the resultant “beating” feels like.) The feeling of slow, organic evolution is inescapable; almost as disconcerting as the overall feeling of dread the piece exudes are the moments of near-consonance. Dayoe writes with a real awareness of the power of silence and near-silence. The difficulty in performance here is one of sheer control, and it is beautifully, even hauntingly, done.

The group’s own saxophonist, Erin Rogers, is also the composer of the final piece Casino (Remix), perhaps unsurprisingly impeccably written for these forces. Sounds seem to ricochet in the sound-space (the online notes on the music refer to a pinball machine, and the analogy is fully justified). Bright, vital, alive, and full of delicately shining beauty, this is the perfect close to the disc (and probably my favorite piece). The recording standard is top-notch. This is a great debut disc by the American ensemble Hypercube: haunting, unsettling, moving. As to how to write “Hypercube,” I remain unsure: it is good old-fashioned capital letter at the start then lower case on the disc back cover, but all capitals on the ensemble’s own website. However one writes it, this is a great disc.

— Colin Clarke, 11.15.2020

Border crossing, boundary melting, mind stomping, and otherwise pulverizing the walls of history and syntax all seem to constitute huge portions of Hypercube’s Modus operandi. On its debut release, the saxophone, keys, guitar, and percussion quartet (Erin Rogers, Andrea Lodge, Jay Source, and Chris Graham respectively) does just that in what it would be folly, along with what the Velvet Underground might call a drag or two of truth, to call grand style.

The five compositions the group caresses, dismembers, and plows through certainly provide a fertile playground for such sonic diversity. Check out the initial scree and squall of Casino (Remix), courtesy of Rogers. Filling the soundstage with descents that purr as much as scream, there’s something silky about it all before the dizzying drop toward near-silence and what sounds initially like Pointillisms redolent of 1960s European free improv. It all turns out to be extremely precise and incredibly virtuosic, as illustrated by aperiodic repetitions and sudden dynamic shifts. The beginning’s reasserting itself is downright magical, nearly inevitable, after what has been, all along, a slow build toward just such an assault on the senses. By way of welcome contrast, Sam Pluta’s American Tokyo Daydream IV (data structures/monoliths) drops as some kind of Anthony Braxton and Frank Zappa hybrid, not such a foreign concept after some discussion with certain AACM members who were absolutely au fait when it came to Zappa’s work. If those proportional rhythms don’t conjure shades of Braxton’s Ghost Trance work in its final stage of development, nothing will, but Zappa’s humorous dynamic meltdowns, timbral juxtapositions, and rhythmic intrigue are all over what is quite a sonic journey.

The album’s centerpiece is doubtless Nicholas Deyoe’s slow-burning and often deliciously sludgy they solidify then tilt. Its atmospheric approach to space means that sounds can bloom and recede at gorgeous length, allowing the group inordinately long opportunities to stretch. Accordion and saxophone sometimes whiplash forward as though playing in reverse, there are occasional bursts of distorted guitar and percussion, but everything seems to emanate from the silence immediately preceding and succeeding it.

In this, Deyoe’s piece shares some ground with David Lynch’s semistatic cinema, and the guitar timbres do evoke the 1950s-heavy “waiting room” chord from Twin Peaks at strategic points. Such timbral allusions are Hypercube’s finest offering. As with Naked City, whose work these stunning players must know, timbral switches abound, rendering history yet another false boundary to be eradicated at every turn. The disc as a whole speaks to similarly layered views of time and space, opening ears and altering states. Pervading it all, as with the best chamber music performances, is the overwhelming sense of transcendent fun, or deep joy, in music-making. The music is as good as the musicians are capable.

— Marc Medwin, 11.15.2020