Hrvatski 'beats it' for
audience at Helio's
By Chris Goodier
Daily Cougar Staff
Tonight, Helio's offers an opportunity
to witness a rare performance by electronic musician Hrvatski. Acclaimed
in the emerging "Intelligent Dance
Music" genre, the laptop musician travels
from Boston with PowerBook in tow to promote two LPs.
Breakbeats from Hrvatski are so fractured
that any attempt to bust a move will send you straight to the chiropractor.
His remixes have been known
to include less than two seconds of the
original song, while his mix of Pink Floyd's "Cirrus Minor" substitutes
recorded bird chirps as vocals.
Deconstructing and inverting a sample until
it resembles a disfigured carcass of the original piece propels songs through
surreal soundscapes.
Analytical composing and musicianship
is unavailable in most beat-oriented music.
Endless loops in 4/4 time are generally
avoided in IDM, as are predictable samples lifted from rap songs at the
end of each measure.
Hrvatski is the alias of Keith Fullerton
Whitman. He experimented with electronic composition long before his stint
at Berklee School of Music.
"I had some synthesizers and a computer
from the age of 14 or so," he said. "At first I was making this guitar
solo music. Then I listened mainly to
space rock or electro-acoustic music.
(From there) I got pretty good at programming drums and got into polyrhythms
and things with that."
Synthetic influences remain on the recent
"Nuclear Cat Gets New Home," in which Hrvatski uses blips and chirps from
Commodore 64 games to
create a drum 'n' bass cut.
Hrvatski's ideas are compelling, but how
satisfying can his live show be for the attendee? Even formulaic and well-rehearsed
live bands can be
emotive with a bad case of "guitar face."
Is staring at an illuminated blank expression entertaining enough to fill
an entire set? And how can the
individual tell if the performer is actually
doing anything with the song?
"I'm not very visually oriented when it
comes to live performance," Hrvatski said. "I'm of little spectacle. I
don't care about the 'glowing face' that
much. The performer is still going to
be there after they play to have a word. I play live with the laptop as
well. Run the sequences live, and play the
guitar/clarinet parts on top."
Perhaps there will be quality synthetic
visuals to quell the ever-shortening attention span of live music patrons.
Or even a projector displaying his
desktop to follow riffs, err, keystrokes.
One thing is certain: With his live shows in demand the world over, Hrvatski's
work ought to be legitimate ...
with or without the "ghost face."
Hrvatski will be playing at Helio's at
411 Westheimer Road. For show times and admission, call (713) 526-4648.
