Tinctures

‘Tinctures’ is Luka Aron’s latest offering, consisting of pure and magnified recordings of a chord-zither, laying bare the instrument’s inherent resonances and quivering sustain – with an immediate physical and emotional affect. By way of close miking, the instrument appears bigger-than-life; at once cavernous and bone-dry. Through this, the listener becomes witness to microscopically observed sound phenomena, as the strings decay in stasis, unveiling many pulsating patterns, capable of inducing austere and solemn alternate states of mind. It is a restrained and slow-moving expression, determined by minimalist compositional principles and the use of several tuning systems (from Pythagorean and meantone temperament on the A-Side to septimal just intonation on the B-Side). ‘Tinctures’ echoes Aron’s early music influences, as well as Stockholm contemporaries Kali Malone and Ellen Arkbro. As the pieces unfurl, the zither is joined by a neglected and untuned pipe organ, found in a 13th century chapel in the rural North of Germany. Its tones were later electronically matched to fit the harmonic space, adding another layer of subtle interaction between pitch and timbre.