The fourth volume of the Organic Music Tapes series brings to a close this cycle that has significantly transformed Tiago Sousa’s music. Compositions in a fluid state, which form nebulae of sounds with imprecise contours for piano, organ and taped loops, based on techniques inaugurated by American minimalism, namely by composers such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley or Charlemagne Palestine.
Throughout this series, we see in the music composed by Tiago a more preponderant role given to the electric organ in counterpoint with pre-recorded loops. This is the moment when this technique is extended to piano compositions. New opportunities thus develop for the repetition and variation of small motifs to induce subtle perceptions and psychoacoustic effects. This latest edition corresponds to the maturing of the Portuguese composer’s intentions around the idea of organic music. In music, too, the organic world is quite different from the one built on rules of syntax and grammar. Rather, it refers to the kind of interdependent relationships and patient and repetitive processes, at the same time spontaneous and unpredictable, that give shape to rivers and mountains, the veins in wood, the fibre in muscles or the marks on a jade stone.
