"holocene dream" - Brendan Byrnes (2022)

 

Brendan Byrnes is one of favorite artists around. First and foremost, he is a specialist in xenharmonic music, which is a way of saying "any music which is tuned in intervals other than those in equal temperament. Because 12 divisions of the octave has been the dominant arrangement of tonality in all music for near 250 years. He is also a renowned arranger, producer and sound designer whose has done work for Vice, Google, KCET and Stitcher to name a few.

In addition to his writing, Byrnes is an established recording and mix engineer that has self-produced and self-engineered all of his music who is a member of several vibrant music scenes in the greater Los Angeles and Chicago areas. His band, Ilevens, is an extension of the concepts and approaches of his solo albums that have for me deepened and evolved drastically soundwise. 

While the subject of microtonality may ring of flatness in the aesthetic sense, I am pleased to report that this is certainly not the case with this album. Byrnes adopts a generally alien character in his music that is somewhat of fluid and featuring a diverse blend of artists across art pop, new romanticism/Goth, ambient music, psychedelic rock and of course, late grunge bands like Placebo and Smashing Pumpkins.

As a fan of composers who utilize different intonations (like Lou Harrison, Wolfgang Von Schweinitz and Larry Polansky), I am very glad that Brynes demonstrates how effortlessly this sound language melds with not just academic but popular music styles as well. And it doesn't hurt that he is performing this enthusiastic fusion primarily on the electric guitar that comes in distorted, modulated and even twangy variations throughout. His songs are often instantly memorable and catchy, even with the sometimes disorienting effects of some of the smaller harmonies imbedded in his structures with alternating 22 and 27 EDO division systems. The advantage of its dual identity as the ancestral and descendent intonation practice to our current default allows one to sound simultaneously futuristic and Medieval. 

The track titles for the most part are all themed after epochs, eras  and ages with an occasional deviation into something more personal. From the chamber dub "Out Of the Sun" thru the relaxed bossa-styled "Rhinosaur" and finally to the swirling, epic space of the title track (which is nearly twice the length of the next longest song), the songs also seem to be sequenced in a chronological way. In word, it's about "evolution" from different perspectives.

Released in November 2022, "Holocene Dream" is Byrnes' 7th solo album depending on which source you read and believe. It's a highly evocative setting of gentle, microtonal-exclusive aspects and the floaty, vast impressions of several sounds that exist in multiple  points in time at once. I imagined small, choreographed, sharply colored lizards and other tiny reptiles slinking step by step across an enormous barren desert while listening to this set. Dancing while traveling and traveling while dancing. In short, it felt like "home".