Leur Songe de la Paix (Their Dream of Peace) is rivetting! (Tom Lane)
[Bat out of Hell] works well. The piece seems to learn its behavior from itself, the melodic/rhythmic material organically evolving like a good improviser. [...] It was nice to have it as a relief to [...] (Larry Austin in Perspectives of New Music)
The poem's image of staring into a river on a cold winter night convincingly permeated the quiet, haunting mood of the work [Kombination XI]. [...] The drone runs continuously, and it is fascinating to follow its course as it is absorbed, overpowered and varied throughout the piece. [...] The drone and the vocal sounds create a consistent sound world that skillfully unifies a wide array of techniques, ranging from a tapestry of chatty syllables to percussive rapid-fire consonants. (Todd Winkler in Computer Music Journal)
I am consistently drawn in to explore this sound and feeling world [of Kombination XI]. The sense of structure is strongly evident at both micro- and macro-levels. This sense of utter structure permeating the work, and a refined setting of the poetry are main components contributing to this ritualistic character. This piece works both as music and as ritual. (Craig Harris in Leonardo)
[Eternal Dream] is a tour de force! (Brigitte Robindore)
[Kombination XI] is a setting of a German poem by Helmut Heisenbuettel. Having lived in Hamburg myself (where the poem takes place), I can empathize very strongly with the imagery of isolation and alienation in the text that attracted Pope. Two voices, male and female, comprise virtually all of the sound material for the work, although it is only from the male voice that the text as a whole is recognizable. The female voice, through more extreme application of processing, fragmentation, and exploitation of particular phonemes, is used to create an ingenious sonic "bed" in which the male recitation lies. Pope makes a virtue of the (potentially objectionable) timbral artifacts produced by what I assume to be a phase vocoder; these artifacts provide both a strong unifying component to the work as well as a reinforcement of the emotional undercurrent of the text. Kombination XI is a compelling exploration of the mutagenesis of poetry into music. It is a serious work which merits close listening. (Rick Bidlack in Array)
What's nice here [in Kombination XI] is that Pope isn't so much interested in the concept of processed voices, but in what the processing actually does to the sound. [...] Pope transcends the "sound as product demonstration" and creates quite a nice atmosphere that is similar to the work of John Duncan or even the features of Nono's late-60s tape work. Texturally rich--something lacking in the world of computer music--and programmatically intriguing, [Kombination XI] stands out as the sure winner on these two CDs. (Jim O'Rourke in Your Flesh)
[Stephen Travis Pope, stp@HeavenEverywhere.com]