The pentatonic consonance and intensity of Lee’s work was matched by the dissonance, experimentalism, and sheer bravado of Ken Ueno’s piece for Alarm Will Sound, (X)igágáí. Ueno’s piece explored different kinds of white noise and wind-like timbres, utilizing a full array of human- and instrument-generated white noise. Shushing, hissing, heavily breathed vocables, a vibrating alarm clock on a snare drum, the slow ripping of paper, and the sound of air breathed through wind instruments all displayed Ueno’s virtuosic control of sounds and timbres, demonstrating that static can be quite variegated. Punctuating all this white noise were a series of loud dissonant chords, shimmering in colors reminiscent of Kaija Saariaho’s music, with long, eerie string glissandi that sounded like the moment before LOST cuts to commercial.

(X)igágáí wasn’t just wind and loud chords, though, as the group played frenetic, chaotic scales leading up to those crashing percussion moments, and a more mellow polyphony of metal pipes that sounded like wind chimes. Both Ueno and Lee were able to harness the sound of air moving, whether recorded or created live, but also to incorporate reminiscences of ancient music, in Ueno’s metal pipes or in the primal plucked strings and hollow bells of Lee’s sound world. Although coming from two very different aesthetic places, both composers were able to articulate something of the San Francisco worldview, in their marriage of Western and exotic sounds, in their experimentalism with timbres and electronics, and in the directness that each used to convey their musical idea to the audience.

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