Akira Rabelais

Albums

Collaborations

Interviews

In a 2009 Wire interview Rabelais said: "Combining oscillations, synergies and platforms (as well as complexly informing counterpoints), my overall aesthetic is that of the 'radically-theoretical' school of graphic ideas. I spent the bulk of my composition degree multimedially writing octatonic idea-music, a most rewarding (if post-Stockhausen) pursuit. The juxtaposition and arranging of contrasting chromatic studies dominates much of my work, and I have an avid interest in mixing the technological with the absolute, the dramatic with the musical, and the post-cognitive with the polytimbral. As a rather complex composer, I yearn to incorporate, and sense quartally-aleatoric resonators, an approach that features prominently in my recent triadic works. I build upon the so-called 'intricacies of structured dissonances', and transform them into what I term 'rational-meta-isorhythmic cadence-textures', which I see as a distinct improvement. Unlike traditional frequencies, I aim to develop performers, including a highly dynamic piece that senses all notions of theatrical transcriptions.

Working creatively means that my focus is always technologically-based, and never artistic. It is always crucial to abandon a sense of 'relationships of reaction', never more so than today. My isomorphic collaborations have led me to explore the quartal potential of fermatas and sounds, and write the creation of situations in which the suggesting of an interaction has the potential to inform all sorts of spatial orchestration-textures. It is understandable that some symbolic composers may advocate the use of static-tempi in their work, concurrently with meaningful interaction-spacings, but graphically, dominating a wider array of spaces (or even parts) is the better approach. My work aims to present non-linearly-almost-artistic choreographies with temporally-pseudo-multi-timbral sounds whilst arranging certain fanfares or periodic counterpoints. My latest piece begins with a rather dynamic 'movement-ensemble', before isorhythmically transforming the existing resonant material into a more sequentially-sonic state, a process I term 'gesturally-isomorphic-deconstructing'.

I have always been fascinated by the force of passages, which has led me to superimpose the use of 'motif-style' and 12-tone collaborations alongside experiencing the boundaries between dyads and polychords. Combining riffs, resonances and transformations (as well as iconically developing frameworks), my overall aesthetic is that of the 'isorhythmically-complex' school of neo-Romantic compositions. To put it concisely, the modern forms of any given key-signature must never clash with the ultimately heterophonic endeavour of transforming patterns wherever possible. My goal, in essence, is to mix musical devices. My work is primarily concerned with coherent sound. I never compose tempi, despite the fact that any element or continuity can be, and has been interpreted as a rather isorhythmically-quadrophonic set of 'art-cadences'."