Album Notes

"Sometimes I Draw Robots" is composer/musician Richard Griffith's second complete album of electronic compositions (his first, "The Disorienting Appeal of Shiny New Things" was released under the artist name The Subterranean Philharmonic Orchestra), and for this release, Griffith draws even more heavily on classical-school electronic influences, evoking textures that suggest the works of Milton Babbitt, Louis and Bebe Barron, Alice Shields and others.

Electronic instruments are capable of a nearly infinite range of timbres, textures and rhythms, and Griffith ventures far afield from the "bass, beats and glitches" ethos that informs much of current electronic music, often forsaking conventional rhythmic and harmonic structures to explore complex improvisations built upon ostinato backgrounds and waves of colored sound. The result, though more often than not atonal, is a surprisingly beautiful and vocal-like expressiveness that is punctuated by Griffith’s humorous, tongue-in-cheek song titles.

Highlights include the playfully intense “Microsuites for Klavier Robotika”, the Ussachevsky-esque “The Girl with the Pinkish Hue”, the hypnotic sequencing of “Morning Dew Makes Orb Weaver Spider Webs Conspicuous” and the ambient expansiveness of the closing track, “Canals of Mars.” Also recommended for fans of genuinely “old school” electronic music (ala the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center) are the three “Sometimes I Draw Robots” pieces and the unquestionably weird “Phantasy 1 for Oscillatora Primitiva”, Griffith’s homage to 1950's era tape-splicing music using a primitive homemade oscillator: a roughly two minute composition that took nearly 12 hours to assemble.

Overall, “Sometimes I Draw Robots” demonstrates a distinct maturing of Richard Griffith’s compositional skills and his ability to utilize electronic instruments to explore sophisticated rhythmic and harmonic ideas, and is highly recommended for fans of John Cage, Milton Babbitt, Steve Reich and other pioneers of electronic composition.

Comments by Raymond "Atomic Ray" Kirby