Warren Burt’s music is all about listening. Well, isn’t all music, someone will object. No, because lots of music is just about hearing, and sometimes not even that, at least not consciously. Again; Warren Burt’s music is about listening; listening hard, getting inside the act of listening to the extent that there no longer is any difference between the listener and that which the listener hears. Like in all very good art, there is an act of identification and recognition in play here, in the finely tuned vibrations of the ether.

Most people will undoubtedly regard Burt as an Australian by birth, but he does originate in the Soviet States of America (as I like to call it after the country renounced democracy in the wake of 9/11, exactly adhering to what the determined pilots and their Lord in the Mountains strived for). Burt studied at the University of New York at Albany and the University of California at San Diego, before shifting over to Australia in 1975, the year the American aggressors were ousted from Vietnam after their almost dreamy Hieronymus Bosch act of genocide.

Warren Burt took up various occupations within the academic world, at places as disparate (or seemingly disparate) as NSW Conservatorium, Victorian College of the Arts, Victorian College of Technology – and as a freelancer in education and radio, as well as engaging in composing, film making, video artistry and arts administration.
The places where Warren Burt has been in residence tell something about his variety of engagements and the almost Renaissance character of his spirit: The Australian Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization, The Los Angeles International Synergy (an art-science think-tank), The Broadcast Music Department of ABC Radio, The American Composers Forum, The Art-Science Laboratory and many more organizations.

Burt began his electronic music and electro-acoustic music and sound art experiments and compositions as early as the 1970s, with a certain tilt towards interactive technology and micro-tonality. Two book by his hand are available: Writings from a Scarlet Ardvark: 15 Articles on Music and Art [Frog Peak Music 1993] and Critical Vices: The Myths of Post-Modern Theory (in collaboration with Nicholas Zurbrugg) [Gordon & Breach 1999].

Warren Burt has also participated on, as well as released his own CDs formerly. This double CD is his latest release, appearing on the experimental and adventurous label XI: Experimental Intermedia Foundation. One of his former recordings – Harmonic Colour Fields – was released on the likewise adventurous label Pogus. One of his more illustrious appearances was made on the celebrated Russian sound poetry release Homo Sonorous, achieved by Dmitry Bulatov in Kaliningrad in 2001. Burt was involved, for nine years, with The Theatre of the Ordinary in Melbourne, doing improvisations with dancers, actors and musicians. As of now he is writing a book on Micro-tonality for the Beginner at the University of Wollongong.

Back to the music of this double CD. Like I said, this music is about listening not simply hearing, but it’s about a way of listening that gradually gets lost in a very focused but after a while almost absentminded way of hearing, that leaves you soaring inside a sound that becomes your life: it’s outline, its content, its color and hue, it smell: the smell of light. You have to become, grow, and loose yourself to reappear inside this space station without a shell, this vehicle without propulsion, this sound of un-sound that completely harbors you in bliss and a gentle color-of-the-rainbow poisoning, in a willing submission to, and coalescing with, a marvelous and hypnotic display of vibrations of sound and nuances of light that you never tire off: a place where you want to stay, which has no geographical or temporal definition: that just is…

I can’t describe my experience of Warren Burt’s The Animation of Lists / And the Archytan Transpositions any better than that. It has to do with letting go, simply, and letting be, letting grow, in a caring and loving abstainment from any influencing involvement. This music is about resting and watching, about soaring and about weightlessness, about deep, penetrating thought let loose, in a sonorous meditation that may take you as far as Dalai lama’s voice in his marvelous Advice on Dying. Let body rest in Tellus’ gravitational field, let vibrations of tuning forks liberate mind!

But, alas, do not fear, do not worry! It is no big commitment to listen to Warren Burt! You may just as well simply play the CDs and enjoy, right off. It may be, though, no matter what you say ahead of time, that you feel invited into some loftier level of consciousness through these sounds!

The promo leaflet that came with the CDs has it:

“There are any number of ways to hear Warren Burt’s music for tuning forks […], the most immediate […] simply to revel in its beauty and enjoy the music as sound”.

Right on! It’s really as simple as that, though the music is so sincerely and relentlessly inspiring that it will indeed carry further!

The leaflet also explains some more technical sides, describing the music – which is true – as microtonal music, using pitches smaller than a half-step, exploring the sounds between the keys of, say, a piano. Burt utilizes from 19 to 53 pitches to the octave, instead of the common 12 of Western tradition.

Many contemporary composers have dwelled in intricate tunings, like Terry Riley and La Monte Young, or Harry Partch. Especially Terry Riley has reached glistening and glaring beauty through this, in works like The Harp of New Albion [for grand piano in just intonation], which was the first work that really opened my ears to these wrangling, soaring, bending and bulging sonorities; new sonic worlds to travel!

One crucial property of Warren Burt’s The Animation of Lists / And the Archytan Transpositions is the unhurried way in which the music soars, settles and ponders; the way it lifts off like a butterfly in Mexican morning light between Mexican Saguaro cactuses and spirals like eagles over Tibetan mountain passes! The time here – the duration – has a scent and a nuance of timelessness; a property in which the aspect of passing time dissolves in an ever-present, omni-present NOW, which embraces all and liberates all from its embrace.

I can’t help it; Warren Burt’s music inspires and instills these kinds of thoughts, these kinds of notions. It’s with a feeling of undirected gratitude that I accept this sounding experience out of Warren Burt’s tuning forks. There aren’t many moments like this in contemporary music.

David Dunn – another wizard of the audios! – has written an interesting essay in the CD booklet, as has Andrew McLennon, William Duckworth and Ron Robboy. The composer himself has written some explanatory words too, in this rich booklet, in a text called Technical notes.

He says that these works constitute

Warren Burt further explains that he wanted to expand this scale for the works on this CD, without making more forks. His solution was to transpose recorded tuning forks slightly in a computer, enabling an added number of pitches that couldn’t be achieved by the tuning forks themselves. He says that the interval of transposition that came out the best was “the 28/27 Archytas’ large 63 cent version of the quarter-tone”. Thus Burt came up with a 53-note scale, which considerably enhanced his pitch possibilities. Allowing himself this technique, he opened for an enormous variety.

I will not go further into this insider information, though there is much more to read in the booklet, but just sincerely and without any hesitation at all recommend this music for all folks with a passion for sound and sound structures. Warren Burt’s The Animation of Lists / And the Archytan Transpositions provides great adventure, like a Shaman’s ride into the Beyond and back, and the beauty of this music is dazzling!