heliosis

A summer piece, but not the kind with a clear landscape under sky blue and sunshine. Dirty, sultry, sticky soot. Being thrown into a desert. Sun, burning over sandy dunes and jagged cairns. Heat that robs the breath, numbs, dazes. Glaringly awake presence tries to fight back. Overstimulated senses, split consciousness – controlled focusing and ordering against letting go. Stiffening in the corset or passing over into loss of control.

The opening hurls us precipaticely into the midst of a dynamic climax. Rhythmic material explodes. Diverse rhythms convey inflamed senses like the wavering between clear wakefulness and exhausted surrender. A glint of dust in the fiery wind, a billow of heat over asphalt runways. The rhythmic structure pushes relentlessly forward, driven by the glow and without pausing. Like a perpetuum mobile, mechanical. The climax suddenly dies away, yielding space to perceiving astonishment. The machine continues to churn, more subterranean, jolted by small eruptions.

Responsible for the sonic topography of the desert landscape are the strings, playing on and behind the bridge, letting the intensity of the sun be felt. In between, whispered and whistling soliloquy. High shimmering, deep wafting, strong contrasts between rhythmic stability and oblique interjections. Extreme highs over deep glissandi, swells and compact chords.

As consciousness splits when overheated, at a certain point the orchestra splits. Tempos slide apart. A unison line, some instruments remaining stable, others "taking off." Piu mosso. Incessant.