Erich Barganier

Creating a deep, visceral response in listeners lies at the heart of my compositional output, taking the form of chamber music or solos written for live musicians, multichannel fixed audio pieces, or multimedia installations that marry homemade and self-processed video with experimental electronic music. This work carves a niche in the current musical landscape, blending the uncanny and strange into something wholly unique.

As a performer-composer who works across musical genres and as a visual artist, I have become acutely aware of the importance of flexibility and combining influences from a variety of styles. My own compositions not only marry timbres and sonic material from jazz, noise rock, experimental electronica, and contemporary classical musical styles, but my process has been greatly inspired by the creative methods outlined in Andre Breton’s manifestos of surrealism. I strive to develop my works with these methods in mind, which include collage and automatic writing, among many others.
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I translate these techniques from their visual and literary counterparts to the audio world in order to accurately capture the spirit of creation of each method. For example, in lieu of traditional collage, I incorporate sonic quotations using electronic samples taken from television or radio advertisement or notated phrases lifted from famous operas or orchestral works that live musicians can realize. For notated works, I use graphic notation and non-standard musical notation to encourage the performers to improvise, creating the same spontaneous feeling in a live performance as automatic writing generates in literature.

In addition to using surrealist creation techniques in a sonic context, experimental and generative coding techniques inform the vast majority of my installation work and electronic music. I actively code in the computer language Supercollider and use the flexibility of the language to create works that give the computer agency to make creative decisions. I accomplish this through the use of neural networks and parameters that rely on randomness to give my pieces a sense of life that otherwise not be heard in a fixed installation. This form of music creation not only provides the audience with a distinct sound world full of unheard timbres that have never before been heard, but can also marry the above listed surrealist techniques into an electronic context.

My work blends elements of violence and absurdity that jar the listener. It is visceral, unrelenting, and captures the grotesque essence of the modern world in which we live.

Erich Barganier’s tracks

• The Questions Of Bartholomew The Apostle by Erich Barganier
• 87/A15 by Erich Barganier
• Prisoner’s Cinema by Erich Barganier
• Down In The Ground Where The Dead Men Go by Erich Barganier
• A Cabinet Of Theoretical Anatomies for solo prepared piano by Erich Barganier
• Esti de Câlice de Tabarnak, C'est Pas Possible Comment Que T'es Cave by Erich Barganier
• Transmigration Patterns Of Swallows, Starlings, And Locusts by Erich Barganier
• Figures At The Base Of A Crucifixion by Erich Barganier
• When The Angels Share Runs Dry - Bearthoven by Erich Barganier