Damion Romero. Hollywood.

In the schools, they teach that good composition sets out a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. Conflicts develop into recognizable climaxes, and ultimately find their resolutions.

Damion Romero offers us nothing so prosaic. Instead, the piece simply opens with a barely-audible hum and suddenly closes when everything is unplugged. In the place of a single fist-pumping climax, sounds ripple to the surface seemingly of their own accord, or are yanked upwards and whipped around by a force unknown. As these storms pass, they leave subtle traces on the remaining mix – a slightly remodulated pulse, a subtle change in pitch, a raising of the overall levels – as if dropping a period at the end of one sentence in order to begin a new one. Beneath these surface events, inscrutable currents slowly pull the mix along. This layered tension between the ongoing development of the piece as a whole and its occasional interruption results in a cyclical back-and-forth, as attention gravitates toward the louder events and away from the slow changes underneath. These slow but punctuated changes comprise the center of the piece, though, and the most effective moments are in these less obvious places.

The label on the record informs us that the piece was recorded on Jean DuBuffet’s 104th birthday, suggesting that the “Monde Brutal” refers to those working outside of convention. We like to think of these as two fully distinct worlds – one populated by those bound by their formal training and one populated by people moved solely by their own demons. Like setting up camp in the wilderness, occasional waves of critical attention to work at the margins brings two worlds together and risks fracturing the latter’s pristine marginality.

With no identifiable climax, there is likewise no definite resolution. While at first, these layers remain resolutely distinct, with loud waves violently crashing over the quieter mix, by the end, the mix has swollen to the proportions of a boiler ready to burst from too much built-up steam. By this point, it becomes harder to assign one element to the position of centrality and the other to interruption – the waves no longer stand out so starkly against the sound of the piece itself. Did the waves rolling over the mix irreparably change it, or was the lower-level mix happily incorporated into these waves? Which layer defied convention, and which was purely formal? Romero’s anti-solution to these questions – simply unplugging the whole problem – does not offer any pleasurable resolution, but in laying them out, he has achieved compositional beauty.