About Pichted Variatrions

Vital Weekly, Mark Daelmans-Sikkel

Three sound sources (two bassoons played by Agustín Agen and Javier Cereceda and one viola played by Sanya Smileska) and the mastermind of Sullivan Johns. The three players played short phrases and notes composed by Johns. Sullivan processed these using pitch control and automation and made seven pieces. The result is simply stunning. Sometimes, it’s like you’re listening to a reed organ because of the timbres of two bassoons (and a viola). At some points, aptly named Bassoon Pitch, it sounds like a contrabass bassoon is in play; it’s that low. Seven pieces in just over half an hour beg for a CD put on repeat, or as my wife does many times: put a single track on repeat for an hour or so. Because there’s pitch control involved, Johns can put a gentle interference into two tones slightly misaligned in frequencies, causing an interference to appear. Sullivan Johns has released two cassettes under the moniker Cloud Diameter. They are more rhythm-driven; on this release, the rhythm comes from the changing notes or added notes in a different octave, kind of like a klangfarbenmelodie, a musical concept developed by Arnold Schönberg that treats timbre as a melodic element. The best example in my ears is Amnerika by Frank Zappa on Civilization Phaze IV, or as played by Ensemble Modern, a real orchestra. The original was written for and played by a Synclavier. The pieces Johns put together also have a Morton Feldman or even Arvo Pärt feel about them, at least in some pieces. Only two pieces can be heard on the Bandcamp page of Moving Furniture Records. All the pieces will be available from March 28th on, digital and on CD. Again, this is a stunning new addition to the MFR Modern Contemporary Series. Before I forget, all three players are experts on their respective instruments. I couldn’t find anything on Agustin Agen. But the other two are well-versed in contemporary music.

Chain D.L.K., Vito Camarretta

A bassoon and a violin walk into a void. Somewhere between them, in the negative space of their resonance, Sullivan Johns listens intently, extracting ghost frequencies and melodic slippages that shouldn’t exist – but do. “Pitched Variations” is an album that doesn’t just explore sound but interrogates it, nudging notes toward dissonance, stretching their identities until they exist in multiple states at once, like a sonic Schrödinger’s cat.
Constructed from single, isolated instrumental tones, these pieces move with an unsettling elegance. “Signal Notes” opens the album with a sense of quiet instability, its carefully warped frequencies shifting like light refracted through imperfect glass. The title “Transistor Bassoon” alone feels like a paradox – woodwind repurposed as circuitry, breath transformed into voltage. “Overlapping System” and “Violin Fore” lean into interference tones and spectral harmonics, teasing out melodies that flicker at the edge of perception. This is music that exists between things: between notation and noise, between human touch and algorithmic manipulation.
Johns, a composer with roots in both experimental music and the acoustic possibilities of the mundane, has built a reputation for dissecting sound like a forensic scientist with a poetic streak. His previous work, “Assembled Parts”, mapped loss and memory through drone and field recordings, and “Pitched Variations” feels like a continuation of that investigation – this time with the most minimal materials possible. Recorded in his repurposed factory space in Hebden Bridge, the album maintains an industrial kind of austerity, yet there’s warmth in its meticulous deconstruction.
Adding another layer, poet Jazmine Linklater contributes text, an element that, though unseen in the tracklist, suggests a literary counterpoint to Johns’ auditory philosophy. One can imagine words, like tones, bending and colliding, forming new meanings through proximity and distortion.
This is not background music. It demands a kind of deep listening that forces the ears to recalibrate. A bassoon and a violin do indeed walk into a void – but in “Pitched Variations”, it’s the space between them that sings.