Gregory Taylor Retinue (2-CD)

The six extended pieces on Retinue had their beginning in a book on creating step sequencers using Max/MSP that Gregory Taylor wrote for Cycling '74 after his return from the Netherlands (where his previous sonic diary Randstad was recorded). The development of the book's materials was an opportunity to re-encounter his love for sequencing as practiced by the form's early (Edgar Froese, Suzanne Ciani, Michael Hoenig) and later (Saul Stokes, Paul Ellis) practitioners and also to explore it's connections with longer form Javanese musical traditions that have informed his work for decades. The crypto Javanese / 1970s German chill-out room hybrid cross composed and recorded using Max/MSP, analog and digital hard / softsynths, and field recordings that resulted is a patient and poised music that embraces fluidity, recombinance, and a languid ambience that reveals itself on repeated listening.After a hiatus from the cassette culture movement of the 1980s, Gregory Taylor returned to regular recording and live performance as an improviser in the late 1990s. He has studied central Javanese Gamelan and electroacoustic music at Cornell, UW-Madison, New England Conservatory and the Instituut voor Sonologie, and written for publications such as Wired, Recording, Array, and Option, and hosted RTQE-a radio program of contemporary audio on WORT-FM since 1986. He currently works for Cycling '74. Retinue is his fifth album for Palace Of Lights.