Scott L. Miller: Raba

I have increasingly found Scott L. Miller to be his own musical voice in the realm of Electronic and New Music. Going through various blog indexes I find this to be in fact the third CD of his that I have reviewed on these pages and the pages of Gapplegate Music Review. He shows no sign of flagging on RABA (New Focus Recording FCR 198). In fact this well may be his most important offering to date.

What started out for Miller as a kind of mini-retrospective of his 20-year cycle of creation rather quickly became a kind of reworking of past efforts into new effusions and novel collaborations. It is a collection of some seven works created over a significant time span (one from 1998, the others completed in their present form in 2016-7). Each occupies a particular niche in the ambient zone. There are some three for "fixed media electronic sound" alone: Autumn Etude (1998), Hilltop at Montalvo (2017), and Solstice Orrery (2016); one for Ensemble U: (alto flute, clarinet, violin, cellos, tam tam, piano) and electronic sound, Raba (2015/2017); two for Daniel Lippel on electric guitar and electronic sound or interactive electronic sound, Admiration (2008/2017), Meditation (2016); and one for electronic sound, Daniel on guitar plus Laura Cocks on flute and electronic sound, The Frost Performs Its Secret Ministry (2016).

The most striking thing perhaps in these compositions as a whole and in general is the acute sense of a vibrant sonority-timbre design that puts each work in a special place and creates memorable ambiances that feel rather organic, naturally growing and permuting. The works that interface conventional instruments and electronics have close overlaps in timbre between the two classes of sounds so that a sort of orchestral luminosity in furthered. And what completes it all is the sort of musico-logic of the sequence of each work. There is not quite a feeling of inevitability so much as there is a kind of "rightness" to the unfolding in time. The liner notes mention his tendency towards something called "granular synthesis," or in other words the breaking up of a sonic signal into grains of sound that each contain some of the audio modeling of the original. One might profitably trace some of the feeling of audio-logic to this process.

One might quibble as to whether Scott L. Miller's music belongs in the New Music category. To me such quibbles are plainly wrong-headed. An electric guitar, for example, is a contemporary instrument like, say, the pianoforte was during its first advent. It is transcendent by now of stylistic pigeonholes. And if ambiance can be found across a spectrum of various stylistic avenues, it is not to say that it does not belong as one of the characteristic modes available to New Music artists today.

What especially matters is that Scott L. Miller excels as an artist in this mode. He is one of the very best active today and one of the most original and consistently satisfying. The program is in many ways a bellwether of New Music-Electronic Music right now. I enthusiastically recommend it to you.

- Grego Applegate Edwards, Classical Modern Music, 5.2.2018

Though “Raba” was conceived originally as a retrospective of Scott L. Miller's work in the ambient field, it ultimately blossomed into a project comprising: solo electronic settings; collaborations with Estonian ensemble Ensemble U:, flutist Laura Cocks, and guitarist Daniel Lippel; and a video component, with visual content for all but one of the seven works having been created especially for the release and featured on a a limited edition DVD (not included with the review copy). In his day job, Miller's a Professor of Music at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, where he teaches composition, electroacoustic music, and theory, and is also President of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). Aside from electroacoustic, another term for the material on Raba is ecosystemic, a term Miller uses to describe the way activity in the natural world is translated in his works into electronic form, interactive sonic ecosystems the result.

It's a striking recording on multiple levels: rather than being purely electronic in design, much of the album's material incorporates sounds from the environment, which has been a major source of inspiration for the Minneapolis-based composer for two decades; and many of the pieces wed Miller's electronic sounds to acoustic sonorities produced by his guests. The hour-long set is enhanced by sequencing that, in general, sees solo settings created by Miller alone alternating with those featuring others. Indicative of his approach is the opening work, Autumn Etude, in which the composer uses granular synthesis to transform sounds of leaves recorded in his backyard into abstract swishing and rattling noises. Similar to the album's other pieces, environment-derived sounds become less identifiable (if not wholly unidentifiable) after processing's been applied, making for material where tensions between abstraction and representation are constantly in play. There's a steely, industrial quality, for example, to the sweeping tones in Autumn Etude that feels far removed from the leaves in Miller's backyard. Not all the solo pieces are as abstract, however: in Hilltop at Montalvo, unprocessed field recordings of the natural environment are present, such that sounds of crickets and an overhead plane are audible alongside the pulsating oscillators.

Ensemble U: plays on the title piece, with in this case the slowly shifting lines of the group's acoustic instruments—alto flute, clarinet, violin, cello, tam-tam, and piano—merging effectively with an oscillator-generated drone. Despite the presence of the latter element, Raba is the most conventional-sounding of the album's seven pieces, even if its electroacoustic drone character aligns it to the project as a whole. Minimal gestures by the players—a single piano note here, a long-held pitch by the cello there—help brand it a Miller creation, but there are moments when the glacial pace and clarinet sonorities suggest a connection, if a tangential one, to Gavin Bryars' chamber ensemble.

In Admiration, Lippel layers his angular electric expressions on top of an ebbing-and-flowing backing track Miller created by processing the playing of clarinetist Pat O'Keefe and cellist Jacqueline Ultan, who were recorded performing a Baroque Sarabande independently of one another. Lippel's second of three appearances occurs within Meditation, where his classical guitar picking interacts in real time with a modular series of patches triggered by Miller—a markedly more destabilizing soundworld than the one crafted in Admiration, with again contrast evident, in this case between the acoustic textures of the guitar and the buzz of the electronics. The marriage of acoustic and electronic sounds works especially well during The Frost Performs its Secret Ministry, specifically in the way Cocks's shakuhachi-like flute and Lippel's guitar textures are used to evoke a frigid winter setting.

The settings on “Raba” eschew the hermetic chill that sometimes shadows electroacoustic productions for a multi-dimensional presentation that feels expansive and inviting by comparison; it's certainly not every day one encounters electroacoustic material that includes the whisper of a flute or intimations of the natural world. Anything but bombastic, Miller's chamber-styled pieces are also generally restrained, understatement and nuance being key to the material's effect.

— Ron Schepper, textura, 6.2018

It's a little naive to say that everything moves forward, but New Focus is showing us that ambient electronic neo classical music is moving forward in the right hands. A long time practitioner with several decades under his belt is now the owner of a blossoming catalog that is well worth a retrospective look over, especially since too many ears outside the realm have probably never heard it. Not to slag the genre pioneers, but his isn't the coma inducing noodling that so much of it was back in the day. A main stream set for left leaning ears, don't be surprised if this is the basis of your kids version of EDM revival a few years down the road.

— Chris Spector, Midwest Record, 6.15.2018

The electronic and electroacoustic music on Raba represents an updating, in its own way, of ambient music by way of contemporary art music. As composer Scott L. Miller explains, the CD began as a retrospective of his work but evolved into a reworking of some old pieces along with the creation of new work.

The title track, composed in 2015 and revised in 2017, exemplifies the paradox of tension within drift that characterizes Miller’s reimagining of ambient composition. The piece is orchestrated for a small electroacoustic ensemble of winds, strings, piano, percussion, and electronic sound. The latter is responsible for the ambience, providing as it does a textural backdrop recalling at times the electronic hum of a distant engine. Over this foundation, the acoustic instruments intervene with complementary washes of sound. The work is low-key but psychologically taut; it creates an atmosphere permeated by unresolved anticipation. The title of The Frost Performs Its Secret Ministry (2016) hints at an estoric action hidden in an everyday meteorological event; this trio for flute (Laura Cocks), guitar (Daniel Lippel) and electronic sound keeps that action veiled in mostly abstract, unpitched sounds: the flute comes in on a gust of air notes, for example. Lippel’s agitated strumming keeps the piece from wafting into languor and instead adds an urgent, emotional edge. Lippel is the pivot for Meditation (2016) for guitar and interactive electronic sound. The piece is undergirded by a feedback-like hum on which the guitar’s coloristic fragments float; from this basic division of sonic parts Miller builds a subtle drama out of oppositions of timbre: the sharp attack, short sustain and relatively muted tones of the nylon-string guitar provide a compelling contrast to the electronics’ sustained sounds.

-Daniel Barbiero, 11.26.18, Avant Music News