It is not often that I come across an album pitched as a blend of Afro-Caribbean rhythms, 1980s thrash metal, and minimalism, but Dan Román’s DVXNS is exactly that eclectic mix. Released Nov. 15 on Neuma Records, the recording features Cuarteto Latinoamericano, a group with a behemoth discography known for championing the works of Latin American composers. As a post-minimalist composition, DVXNS sits squarely between linear approaches of composers like John Adams and the more static ones of Philip Glass. The combination of Román’s subtly shifting motivic cells along with Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s steely precision results in a heavy metal hypnosis that is both overwhelming and transfixing.
DVXNS is Román’s third string quartet, which stands in stark contrast to his earlier works for strings, which feature leaner textures and lengthier structures. Though he has always been fascinated by symmetries, visualizations, and the idea of delegating structural decisions to performers, DVXNS does so with a certain veiled elegance. Beyond the gritty, metallic surface of the piece, Román has structured each movement into a series of “divisions” arranged in a palindromic order. He even gives the performers license to perform the sections in reverse order (“Reverso”) and overlay the forward and reverse versions of the piece using two string quartets (“Directo + Reverso”), resulting in three different recordings of the composition on the album.
Musical palindromes have long piqued the interest of Western Art Music composers. There is something enticingly fatalistic about leaving the composition of a piece up to a previously defined process. Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone method is a prime example of how strict processes can guide the unfolding of music. Román’s inclusion of palindrome as a key structural element shows a similar fascination with this idea of process music, though its minimalist exterior leads to a different sonic experience than Schoenberg and other palindromist composers like Paul Hindemith or J.S. Bach. The focus on process in DVXNS also reveals a shift in compositional priorities that favors audience perception (Can a listener hear that a musical palindrome has occurred?) over linearity and narrative (Who is the protagonist in a musical story?).
The Afro-Caribbean rhythmic elements in DVXNS are a bit harder to identify. They mostly come through in syncopations in the inner string voices and act as an internal balance to the gruff, unsyncopated patterns that are more easily heard in the foreground of the piece. Through this nuanced approach, Román makes the spirit of these rhythms integral to the work’s character without exoticizing or overplaying the effect that they have on listeners.
Cuarteto Latinoamericano: Arón Bitrán, Saúl Bitrán, Javier Montiel, and Álvaro Bitrán — Photo by Sergio Yazbek
A major challenge that this album faces is brought about by the same features that make it distinctive. Because the minimalist texture changes with only the greatest of subtlety across sections, experiencing the different permutations of DVXNS (forward, backward, or both simultaneously) may not evoke drastically different reactions from an audience. So is the piece meant to be more of a listening puzzle to be examined in a very cerebral way? And, from a performer’s perspective, if all the versions of the piece are equally valid, how does one go about presenting the piece convincingly?
Listening to the album from top to bottom did not inspire as much curiosity in me as I thought it would. I found it was necessary to click through the tracks out of order and scrub between corresponding palindromic sections in order to make sense of the work. Naturally being drawn to puzzles, knowing that there were palindromes put me on a slightly obsessive mission to identify them and to see the effect of the various orientations of the movements. However, this type of listening is not usually possible in the context of live performance; so, I wonder how effective concert versions of this piece might be in connecting with an audience.
Despite some of these conceptual ambiguities, Cuarteto Latinoamericano provides three thought-provoking renditions of DVXNS, each with slight differences that push listeners to tease out the curious arrangement of Román’s palindromes. The resultant recordings successfully overcome the philosophical complexities of palindromic music, infusing the performers’ human will, intention, and drive into the very fabric of the music. This interpretive element is not only a striking sonic feature of the album, but enlivens the core of the work’s performance by showing the unique way in which humans interact with seemingly non-human compositional processes.
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