One of the core concerns in Ken Ueno’s work is examining the transformation of timbres, from noise to pitch, from obscurity to clarity, from sparseness to density. No instrument category is better suited to the austerity of this kind of sonic inquiry than percussion, and percussionists have consistently been key allies of Ueno’s throughout his musical life. Ken Ueno’s work is both intensely focused on those characteristics that capture his interest, while remaining broadly inquisitive with respect to where he might find new sources of inspiration. One finds Ueno excavating diverse spaces in academic, experimental, DIY spaces, always armed with an openness and wonder about the fundamental nature of sonic experience and how he might explore it in his next project. Wavelengths is a collection of four of his works, three of which are for various percussion instruments, and one for his own voice with sampled electronics, highlighting Ueno’s sensitivity not only to timbral modulation, but also his aesthetic convictions about temporal evolution and how it is manifested in the structure of his pieces. Wavelengths for solo vibraphone and sine tones opens the album, written for and performed by percussionist Karen Yu. Ueno uses sine waves, played by small speakers placed onto specific bars of the vibraphone, as a vehicle to explore and expand upon the vibraphone’s equal temperament. The acoustic beatings produced between the sine tone and the played vibraphone notes, a variable that Ueno further manipulates by making subtle changes to the sine tones, also become sources of rhythmic extrapolation that are developed in the performed vibraphone part. The vibraphone motor also plays a role in this pattern of stretching and relaxing tension in the piece, and later in the work, performed sounds are recorded and played back through another set of speakers, creating multiple layers of self-referentiality and subtle pitch interaction. Splashes of arpeggiated harmonic color animate the grinding acoustic foundation that Ueno steadily manages in this hypnotic work. …a.m… for percussion quartet charts a trajectory between white noise at its opening to a tolling chorus of tuned metal pipes by its end. “Hacked” digital alarm clocks provide the immersive timbre of the work’s opening bars, placing the listener inside a liminal zone that suggests the line between sleep and wakefulness. Ueno shatters the stasis with one short accent on the snare drum, before returning to a gradually modulating drone. There is an implicit invitation to listen to the sound inside a noise texture which is vintage Ueno, an assertion that there is always a layer deeper within which to listen. More interruptions follow, a pitched metal pipe and then a taut snare drum roll which itself becomes the focal point for an extended contemplation. …a.m… evolves through different vocabularies of timbre, from the static noise of the alarm clocks, through the percolating rolls of the snares and occasional bell interruptions, to wave-like cymbal swells, and finally to the wind chime texture of metal pipes. At its midpoint, we hear the most virtuosic material for the ensemble, as the performers spar with each other in rhythmic bursts of timbral heterophony. Experimental vocal performance has been a key component of Ueno’s practice for many years, and he has developed an individual vocabulary that incorporates throat singing and extensive extended vocal techniques. I am the uncle who sees past lives combines Ueno’s vocal performance practice with a fixed media electronic part assembled out of samples created for a sound installation by the artistic partnership ADRUNNOGNT (Arnont Nongyao and Nguyen Ngoc Tu Dung) presented at the Thai Wonderfruit Festival. In this sense, the piece is based on a collage of a collage in a sense, but in this performance, we hear some of the same musical parameters with structural implications that were at work in the other pieces, namely a focus on timbral modulation and acoustic beatings as a formal element. Ueno writes: "I am the uncle who sees past lives is an exploration of resonance—not just sonic, but metaphysical. It is about the ways sound lingers beyond its source, the ways past lives echo into the present. In this piece, the jungle, technology, the human voice, and the surrounding world all converge in a singular, ephemeral experience." Phase Patterns of Likeness Slightly Off for four percussionists is a sibling work to Wavelengths, reveling in the sonic properties of the vibraphone, now heard as a four part chorus. Written for Karen Yu’s ensemble The Up:Strike Project, the piece contains some of the albums densest ensemble writing, unfolding from the initial burst of harmonic color into flourishes of charged, coagulated energy. But the music lives just as much in the sustains between these phrases, as Ueno makes extensive use of the vibraphone motors to modulate the resonating harmonies, injecting them with pulsating waves. After approximately two minutes, attention is focused primarily on these sustained sonorities themselves, as they are further activated by subtle rolls and changing motor speeds. For much of Phase Patterns of Likeness Slightly Off the four vibraphones move as if in a flock of birds, preserving their independent trajectories while flowing effortlessly within the larger contours of the group. The final three and a half minutes signal a shift, as Ueno creates a steadier foundation of pulse and its subsequent divisions that serves as the frame for a pitch migration towards the higher register, zeroing in on closely spaced intervals and the brilliant resultant acoustic dialogue that emerges between them. – Dan Lippel