Announcing a new release: Calefaction. Listen here:
WHY
Calefaction means the production of heat, the act of warming.
In making music, we’re making heat, energy, warmth to support life – the life of the ear, the heart, the mind, the soul. Music is calefaction.
What surprised us in making this piece and looking back? We started with seed material that tended towards the abstract, intellectual side of things. Not especially “warm” to begin with. But warmth got produced along the way. Writing this piece was a kind of “calefaction” for that seed material.
For Brian Theoret, this piece is part of an ongoing journey in electronic production.
For Rudi Seitz, it’s part of a larger project to take fragments from his classical canons and collaborate with other artists to remix them in a way that opens up new ways of hearing them.
WHAT
Calefaction is ambient electronic music with a driving beat you can chill to.
It’s also a creative reinterpretation – a fantasy – based on a short passage from Rudi’s canon Ammolite.
The seed material is a tune that can be played forwards and backwards.
In Calefaction, you’ll hear the forwards version of the tune enter around 0.26, then repeat at 0.36. The backwards or “retrograde” version of the tune comes in at 1.06. Near the end of the piece, starting at 4.22, you can hear the forwards and backwards versions playing at the same time, just like they do in the original Ammolite canon starting at 0.15 there.
WHO
Rudi and Brian first met at New England Songwriter’s Retreat in 2019.
They both make acoustic music for voice and guitar, but in this collaboration they’re focusing on other musical interests.
Brian makes ambient electronic music and you can hear some of it in his album Purl Blue.
Rudi composes classical canons and you can hear some of them in his album Meteorite.
Rudi and Brian joined forces here to create a new piece that would reimagine a fragment from a classical canon in an ambient electronic style.
WHEN
Rudi composed Ammolite in September 2021 and it was recorded on clavichord by Matthew McConnell in October 2021.
Rudi and Brian started corresponding about making a new piece in January 2023. The following month, Rudi sent the seed material to Brian as a MIDI file. Brian created the track, finding a beat to accompany the tune, adding chords and bass lines, layering the tune on top of itself, creating loops, choosing instrument sounds, and adding effects. Then Rudi and Brian spent the next few months refining all that material. They finished it in June 2023 and decided on the name Calefaction.
HOW
The piece was put together in Cubase, with a small edit done in Melodyne.
The cover image is based on a photograph by flickr user Arbyreed, modified by Rudi in Photoshop. (The photograph happens to be “flipped” like the tune in Calefaction can be flipped.) Why a circuit board? This is electronic music. And canons are almost “computational.” But basically we liked the colors and overall look of this particular board. The vibe seemed to go with the sounds we made.
WHERE
Rudi and Brian collaborated remotely, using Zoom, Google Meet, Discord, StreamYard, Dropbox, all of that.
Rudi is based in East Boston, MA.
Brian is based in Monroe, CT. ■