David Lee Myers - Strange Attractors

From David Lee Myers

Strange Attractors is an example of what may be called Time Displacement Music. A varying mix of feedback, other noise sources, and found sounds are fed to a series of stereo digital delay units whose parameters (delay time, reverse, freeze, etc.) are manipulated in real-time via LFOs, sample and hold controllers, and so on, as well as live manual adjustments to produce an ever-evolving pastiche of sound washes. Sitting quietly (especially late at night) and listening to these compositions can be strangely exhilarating.

My earliest involvement with electronics in music was the introduction of tape delay units. They utterly fascinated me: take a moment of time and store it, move it about, bend it into different shapes. Unbelievable! I spent hours unearthing the possibilities. Years later, technological advances have allowed much more complex capabilities in this realm, and modern versions of the time delay have always been at the core of my sonic explorations. Thus, Time Displacement Music.

Taoism, Buddhism, and even contemporary physics state that fundamentally, there is no time, that there is only an incomprehensible eternally existing now, which we have little to no understanding of. But as a composer, I play with time. Unlike painting, for instance, all music is time-based. This creates a conundrum: if time does not exist, what is a composer working with, working upon? I cannot give a meaningful answer, but continue to play... Perhaps we can agree with William Blake, who stated, “The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”

Biography

David Lee Myers is a sound and visual artist living in New York City. He has over sixty recordings released under his own name and also as Arcane Device by Starkland, Crónica, Generator, ReR, Line, Silent, Pogus, RRRecords, Staalplaat, Monochrome Vision, and many other labels. He has collaborated with Gen Ken Montgomery, Thomas Dimuzio, Ellen Band, Marco Oppedisano, Merzbow, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Dirk Serries (Vidna Obmana). Two albums were created with legendary electronic pioneer Tod Dockstader, and five with Hamburg’s master sound manipulator Asmus Tietchens. Myers has performed his sounds and visuals at New York’s Generator, The Kitchen, Roulette, Experimental Intermedia, Knitting Factory, Clocktower, MoMA/ PS1, Outpost Artists Resources, Trans Pecos and Silent Barn, as well as the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Boston Museum of Modern art, among others.