EatDrinkGambleSex

Well, that title should help my traffic. But it is also one movement of Casino, a work by Phillip Bimstein. Bimstein writes a post-minimalist type of musique concrète, with recorded and sampled sounds superimposed with traditional musical instruments. Perhaps this is the Varèse-ian school of music that Robert Gables is looking for. The voice of the dice-caller in Casino is rather bland sounding. Perhaps this can have an ironic twist on his philosophizing about a tawdry subject, but as a sonic feature it was disappointing. The voices of Robert Logan, "Bushy Wushy The Beer Man", and Larkin Gifford are more complex, combining with the sampled sounds and repetitive music in a pleasing variety of timbres. Information and other reviews about the Starkland CD, Larkin Gifford's Harmonica, can be found here.