Chas Smith, a maverick West Coast composer in the spirit of Harry Partch and Harry Bertoia, creates much of his music from instruments of his...

Chas Smith, a maverick West Coast composer in the spirit of Harry Partch and Harry Bertoia, creates much of his music from instruments of his own design and own tuning. The first two pieces on this CD, beautiful and texturally dense, explore the often electronic/music-concrete-sounding world of Smith’s bowed and struck metal instruments. The leisurely paced last two pieces feature the composer performing on pedal steel guitar. Electronic Musician magazine wrote of this CD, “Smith creates unsettling music that is both beautiful and eerie.” International Record Review wrote, “This disc offers musical experiences utterly out of the ordinary…. Smith’s pieces are music of experiment and discovery: a way of enabling the physical world to ‘speak’ by investigating, harnessing and organizing its sonic properties. The extraordinary sound-world of Smith’s articulately structured music captivates from the start.” The Wire magazine commented, “With Smith’s music, the sounds are as compelling as his concepts and instruments.”