Free Radicals – a view from the 1990’s

An excerpt from the article John Rimmer and Free Radicals: live electronic music in New Zealand by Elizabeth Kerr, published in the journal Contemporary Music Review, 6:1, 173-177 (1991).

Jonathan Besser and Ross Harris of Free Radicals

…crossing traditional stylistic boundaries with apparent ease.

Composer Ross Harris studied with his compatriot Douglas Lilburn as a post-graduate student at Victoria University, Wellington, where he joined the staff in 1971, working with Lilburn in the electronic music studio there and taking over as its director in 1980 on the retirement of the older composer. He composed his first essay in live-electronics in 1979, Echo for trumpet and tape delay, in which a rich brass polyphony is created by two channels of delay and a circular loop. The theme as expressed in the title is enhanced by the placing of the speakers outside the performance area. Two years later in Incantation for soprano and tape he created a melismatic vocal setting of a Swedish text by Gunner Ekelöf, which interacted with the vocoded songs of New Zealand birds, kokako and bellbird, on the electronic tape.

 In 1983 came a significant new direction when Harris collaborated with American-born composer Jonathan Besser and several other musicians to form the live electronic group Free Radicals. The name comes from chemistry – “free radicals” are molecules which have an odd number of electrons, and as a result are very active and reactive tending to pair up with other molecules.[1] The group was quite large at first, but soon settled down to a core of two members, Harris and Besser, sometimes joined by flutist Gerry Meister. Their music was from the beginning difficult to categorise. Combining as it did a multiplicity of backgrounds and influences – Harris the university-trained composer has also been influenced by electronic developments in recent popular music, while Besser, also trained in the western classical tradition, has a strong background in jazz improvisation dating from his upbringing in New York City.

 From the beginning their approach to equipment has been positively eclectic, and they work now with a collection of instruments which virtually summarises electronic developments in the 20th century: the simple technology of the Theremin from the 1920’s through various older synthesisers to more recent computer-based systems. With a MIDI-based setup, Harris uses Mirage sampler, Yamaha TX7 and TX81Z synthesisers, various Korg and Roland modules and a pitch-to-voltage converter on his French horn. He also works live with Macintosh sequencing software, specifically the programmes Jam and Opcode 2.5.[2]  Besser uses both piano and electronic keyboards, and also plays recorders.

 In performance they combine some pre-corded taped material with live improvisation. Extra-musical themes predominate, although not all of their works use mimesis. Strange Attractor for example has a jazz structure with no referential aspect. More typical, however, is another recent work, Drive It, which has a rugby theme and uses taped material from live matches and radio broadcasts. A sub-plot about war uses sounds recorded live ay an Anzac day dawn parade, but it is the football material which predominates. The referee’s whistle, the commentators voice and various crowd noises are combined at first with melodic fragments and occasional chords in an introductory section with a non-metrical multi-layered texture. This leads to the main section of the piece, which has a basic structure of computer-controlled acceleration by metric modulation.

 The influence of rock music, most evident in Free Radicals’ rhythmic and metrical structures, becomes apparent in Drive It as a dramatic snare drum ushers in a rock ostinato, and the textural balance shifts to combine this minimal material with the taped rugby sounds and various non-metrical electronic events. The textural complexity is typical of the group and particularly the work of Harris himself. A teacher of counterpoint, his compositions have always shown a preoccupation with linear thinking and multiple layers, and considerable skill in the integration of various disparate elements.

 Free Radical cross traditional stylistic boundaries with apparent ease. Their work also incorporates occasional black humour. In Drive It a certain irony in style contrives to “send up” both rugby and rock music. The brief mention of “Springboks” adds a political dimension, albeit understated.[3]

[1] New Zealand-born kinetic sculptor and avant garde film-maker Len Lye (1901-1980) used the expression as a film title; in Why I scratch, an unpublished manuscript, he described his Free Radicals (1958) as “white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches on black 16mm film in quite doodling fashion.”

[2] Jam simulates four players in the computer who will reply to the live performer with variations; Opcode 2.5 is useful for programming multiple looping patterns and real-time triggering of programmed sequences.

[3] The 1981 tour of New Zealand by the South African Springbok rugby team and the associated anti-apartheid protests were significant events in New Zealand’s political and social history. The material in this piece is from an earlier tour by the Springboks in 1960 , from a record made of one of their matches against the New Zealand All Blacks. Besser “improvises” with the record by manually rotating it on the turntable.