Three Days – out on New Focus Recordings
“It is a full album of intelligent, extended techniques invention that brings us forward in the experimental language of abstracted Modernism with sound explorations and noise-pitch dialogues for violin (Erica Dicker), percussion (Allen Otte) and sound artist composer-improviser (Paul Schuette). . . It is complicated and ever-changing but it is excellent and without a doubt some of the best of this sort of thing that has come by me in the past decade. Vaster Than Empires is decidedly inspired on this album.”
“Collectively, the group’s sound tends toward a thick sonic impasto drawn from the harsher end of the audio spectrum. Dicker’s contributions on strings, for example, eschew melodic lines in favor of drones, thickly bowed chords, and the more elemental hues produced by extended techniques; her instrumental voice is appropriately complemented by Otte’s tension-filled percussive excursions and Schuette’s abstractions for guitar and synth.”
Daniel Barbiero, AMN Reviews
About
A violin subjected to toys, hardware implements and effects pedals; a prepared yang-chin, bicycle wheels, and an amplified found-object sound-board; a modular synthesizer stirring electronic effects into a soup of sonic feedback: Vaster Than Empires. Since joining forces in Cincinnati in 2013, VTE comfortably/uncomfortably explores the far-ranging textures and sound-scapes from all points along the space-time continuum. With our ears as guides, we sustain a musical relationship by way of an instinctual system in interstellar performance practice
Check out the review by Peter Margasak – Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: January 2017
MUSIC
Improvisations
recorded live at The University of the Arts ‘Out of the Box’ performance series – March, 15 2016
this performance makes use of our 4-channel violin pick-up – see it here
Anthony Braxton – Ghost Trance Music
‘Vaster than Empires’ – 12 minute version
‘Vaster than Empires’ – 45 minute version – EXCERPTS
Images
