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Larry Kucharz
Ambient Red Washes
Larry Kucharz is one of the most underrated and
underappreciated artists in the e-music community. He is
also a true visionary. His CDs almost always include
pieces that he created several years before the release.
Ambient Red Washes is a set of eleven
compositions, three of which are from 1993. Larry's
"Vision" allows those pieces to fit smoothly in the flow of
the disc. While the segues sound effortless, they are not.
Larry is a diligent perfectionist -- or so it would seem
judging from his releases -- and he most likely worked
the flow ardently until he got it just right. This set of
relaxing and hypnotic atmospheres is flawless. Each
track has its own merit and integrity. Each track is also a
major ingredient of the bigger picture. They all play
important roles in Larry's musical monochromatic
experiments. This solid effort is one of the year's best
CDs. ~ Jim Brenholts
CyberChoralColors
By Larry Kucharz
International Audiochrome, 2002
P.O. Box 1068
Rye, NY 10580
E-mail: intaudiocr@aol.com
Larry Kucharz has been around the New York music scene for more than thirty
years as a “contemporary classical” composer in the experimental and
minimalist genre. In the last decade he saw the music writing on the wall:
classical music is just about dead except as an unprofitable museum. So he
decided to market his music not as traditional concert performance but as
electronic music on CD’s, published on his own private label, “International
Audiochrome.” He has done not only “modern classical” but also techno,
dance, and popular music releases.
This album features rhythm-less “choral” or chord-oriented pieces, with
some counterpoint. His sounds are mostly sampled from human voices, but you’
d never know; they all sound electronic. The music is transcribed from his
own “classical” scores, and his harmonies usually follow traditional keys
and harmonies. But sometimes they are “impressionistic,” reminiscent of
Debussy, and other times they use the mystical tone-clusters of more recent
composers like Ligeti and Arvo Part. The “Cyber” series, in the first half
of the album, is a set of pretty, slow, and sometimes sleep-inducing
meditations. This is followed by the shorter “Organum” series, which has
more motion. Some of these pieces are recent, written after 2000, and
interestingly these are the simplest harmonically. His earlier work, written
in the early ‘70s, is much more interesting to me, with modernist
tone-clusters or neo-medieval voice leading in the style of Hindemith. None
of these pieces have recognizable “tunes” or melodic lines; it’s the
harmonies which count here.
Kucharz varies his sound quality in the third “Fugal” series, but in
general the music on CyberChoralColors tends to be monotonous and
limited in texture. I kept thinking about how it would sound if Kucharz had
scored it for a wider range of instruments and volumes. As it is, this album
is rather bland, despite the musical sophistication of its composer.
Hannah M.G. Shapero
3/28/03
Techno Unit 30, "audiochrome" (International Audiochrome)
"Thinking man's techno" if there ever was such a style. Techno Unit 30 is
really the innovative classical/minimalist composer Larry Kucharz, and this
CD is a wonderfully unique take on contemporary electronic music.
All compositions are named sequentially, the first being "U301" and the
ninth and last named "U309." This is pretty appropriate, since all the tracks
sound similar. However, it's hard to complain too much when that sound is
like none other. Kucharz actively shuns most normal sources for techno loops;
there is a little electronic percussion and techno's ever-present deep kick
drum, admittedly, but there are also trippy organ drones, found percussion,
and Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze-like ambient weirdness. The composer uses
these loops very sparingly, as well, effectively creating wide-open spaces in
the music. What's more, Kucharz isn't afraid to have different loops at
different tempos, creating truly mesmerizing pieces of clockwork. It is here
that his minimalist roots show most.
True, the music is incredibly repetitive, but the repetition is an
important compositional feature, and I doubt anyone used to hearing
electronic music will find it too distracting. Bottom line: Unique and
challenging. ~Jon Dharma
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