Dark Full Ride (2002)

It rarely happens that a work scored almost exclusively for percussion instruments sounds almost like an orchestral work. The obsessive ostinati and rhythms tearing the listener out of the state of blissful contemplation or intellectual fascination have an effect here just like that of percussive fragments from the early œuvre of Igor Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring) or even Edgard Varèse. The axis of the narrative is the percussion. It is its sound that dominates the others. Dark Full Ride is a vigorous sound machine of exceptionally coarse contours created by the quadruple percussion, six pianos (treated percussively), eight double basses and nine bagpipes. The unique utilization of the latter instruments (in contemporary music, bagpipes are basically ignored as an instrument of limited melodic and dynamic capabilities) permitted the achievement of a one-of-a-kind atmosphere of the domination of a hellish monster whose dimensions are unknown, but which by reason of its noisy exterior appears to be a serious threat to people.

[Maciej Jabłoński]