Fire Chorus is a work of “construction”. If, Bwana (alias, or, as you prefer, “personification”, of Al Margolis), presents a sound form starting from the concept of “perception”. His concept of electroacoustic music doesn’t belong to the idea of “appropriation” (which is behind the gestures of many people now working with natural, non-musical, or “other” sound sources). If, Bwana uses his raw materials as animated objects,letting them appear and disappear in his own sound structures. He creates an environment for the sounds, mixing “music” and noise, human voices, landscape voices, machine voices. The four long tracks on this album are four explorations and, perhaps, four different sound “constructions”. Chimes is a long, continuous immersion, from the inside to the outside. Fire Chorus paints a picture such as those of Hieronimus Bosch, a kind of imploded soundtrack for a complicated and distorted world. Day 8: McKenna’s Brain is a collage with a strong theatrical aspect, joining metallic sounds to “details” of foreign languages. Accidentally Angelica, is a long,concluding, nocturnal path, a symbol of the eternal If, Bwana’s wandering thru the mists of a panorama of archaic but modern sounds.
If, Bwana (born Al Margolis) is a composer and musician. He has number of recordings under his own name, and has collaborated with such artists as David Prescott, Adam Bohman, and Tom Hamilton. He’s a member of the group The Styrenes. Lastly, he’s the deus ex machina behind Pogus Productions, one of the leading labels of the American experimental scene.