Who’s up for some January stasis? German composer Robert Henke‘s 10-minute piece Oomoo is a beautiful demonstration of ambient stillness. It dates from late 2007, and is, according to Henke, based on “a single recording of a longer pad-sound of a Yamaha SY77 synthesizer” which “has been sampled, transposed, filtered and layered”.
That’s a short, simple description, but as usual with Henke, the results are more nuanced and, in true ambient fashion, ever in motion. Ostensibly it’s just a G minor chord, but its initially soft, gentle, character is soon revealed to have a noisy, rippling surface. Quite apart from that, though, even in the first 90 seconds the triad itself is revealed as unstable, its internal pitch focus continually shifting. The chord turns tenebral, brightens while remaining semi-dark, ripples again. It gradually comes to feel robust and sturdy, so that when it gains brightness again, seemingly starts to shine. Strong rumble seems less to undermine than reinforce it, and by now the ebb and flow of light makes it resemble a very slowly pulsating object.
Yet shortly after the midpoint there’s a new kind of surge, almost unsettlingly large. Yet, like being far out at sea, it’s just a particularly prominent swell that doesn’t change or challenge the underlying continuity. That’s the essence of the work’s stasis, that while the details of its slow-form flexing are never the same, they’re part of the same fundamental behaviour and language. In the closing couple of minutes, seemingly an answer to – perhaps a consequence of – that huge surge, the chord is practically swallowed up by bass, faint upper notes continuing to tickle the surface. But here, too, the bass serves to reinforce things, emphasising that never-changing note G, the foundation and harmonic source of everything we’ve heard. As everything fades, it’s as if Henke had saved this most basic but significant bit of musical information for the very end.
Released on 1 January, 2007, Oomoo is available for free download.
