Iolet: Music from the World of Anathem
Anathem is a new novel by author Neal Stephenson. It is set on Arbre a planet much like our own Earth except that on Arbre people are divided into two main groups, the saaecular and the avout. The avout live apart from the saecular world and inside their monastic sanctuaries they preserve science and philosopy. While the saecular world lives in the short term and goes about cycles of booms & busts, wars, religions, marketing, and fads, the monks live their lives based on a longer sense of time; time which is measured not just in fifteen minute intervals, but in millenia. Many interesting things ensue in the book and suffice it to say the monks are called to leave their cloisters and interact with the saecular world because of an unprecedented event in the history of Arbre. http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem
Now you may ask how the heck does all of this relate to funketabla? Well, the monks on Arbre make music as part of their daily rituals and on the occasion of special events. And this is where Funketabla connects with Neal Stephenson, via a musician/vocalist/composer named David Stutz. http://synthesist.net/music/
David Stutz composed several math based musical pieces to represent the music of the monks of Arbre. http://synthesist.net/music/anathem/ He called Funketabla’s James Whetzel to bring his throat singing skills to this recording project. http://www.funketabla.com/jwhetzel.php
James’s low throat singing is featured in the piece called “Thousander Chant,” which is a solo piece in which James plays the role of Fraa Jad a thousand year old monk. In “Quantum Spin Network,” James’ singing is multi-tracked and arranged by David Stutz to emulate quantum mechanical effects. James low throat singing also occurs in the pieces “Deriving the Quadratic Equation” in which it plays the role of drone for the other singers. You can listen to these pieces here on James’ artist page on funketabla and on James’s ilike page or his myspace page: http://www.funketabla.com/jwhetzel.php http://www.ilike.com/artist/James+Whetzel http://www.myspace.com/jameswhetzel
These pieces along with other beautiful pieces of vocal music inspired by the Pythagorean Theorem, the numeral Pi, and cellular automata, are included on a CD called “Iolet: Music from the world of Anathem.” This music was originally used to promote the novel in advance of its release. A promotional video was made also: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=41718483
The music is now available for purchase online. All proceeds benefit The Long Now Foundation. http://www.longnow.org/about/
The CD can be bought directly from Long Now and also from CD Baby:
http://www.longnow.org/shop/longnow-merch/iolet-music-of-anathem/
http://cdbaby.com/cd/davidstutz
We hope you enjoy the music of the avout of Arbre.
Best literary, musical, and lengthy temporal regards,
Your friends @ Funketabla