The sound of 'Science': Wires Under Tension's stunning instrumental album rises from the South Bronx
"Meeting people who are just like you is not why you come to New York."
Tignor, who grew up in northern New Jersey, arrived in the city after getting a degree at the prestigious Bard College. (He's finishing up a doctorate in composition at Princeton.) His goal was to find a space where he could both live and record. "If I have an idea in the middle of the night, I want to be able to just go and work on it," he says. "Also, I'm cheap."
The anxiety of needing to find both a new home and studio after the eviction would up informing the music Tignor would make in Mott Haven.
"It was a really tense time," he says.
Ergo the name, Wires Under Tension. The album "Light Science" sets a shadowy and anxious pace right with its opening piece, "Electricity Turns Them On." A gorgeously throbbing sprawl of synths coil around an evocative violin line, reminiscent of the one in King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic." A steady beat from Metz keeps the music as sharp as it is beautiful. As the disk progresses, guest players weave in, providing everything from horns to clavinet.
Tignor's ban on singers for this album isn't iron-clad. "It's just that once you have a vocalist, that defines the narrative," he says. "I wanted the instruments to create the narrative."
(((Read the full interview here!)))
