"Composition N. 247" (which makes up the whole duration of this CD) is
part of Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music series. An untypical
gesture, this one is scored for a specific instrumentation of two reeds
and bagpipes. The latter, performed by Matthew Welch, gives the piece a
highly unusual sound (the place of bagpipes in creative music is close
to nil). Another difference from most of the other GTM compositions
resides in the fact that the string of eighth notes serving as the
looped motif also includes occasional rhythmically complex figures (such
as 16th notes quintuplets), which disrupt the steady march of the
piece. One final novelty: The piece uses only nine notes -- the ones
available on the bagpipes. All this being said, the resulting piece
makes one huge hour-long marathon involving constant circular breathing
and a complex system of cues, shifts, and bouncing between pages. It
leaves the listener, who does not have the score to follow its intricate
subtleties, exhausted and perplexed. The drone of the bagpipes opens
interesting polyphonies and the cycling repeated motifs create an
hallucinogenic state of mind, but most listeners will prefer to push the
stop button before they reach the end. And one can hardly blame them.
James Fei's liner notes bring shed some light on the piece. François Couture
Tracklist :
1 Composition N. 247 1:01:35
Credits :
Bagpipes – Matthew Welch
Music By – Anthony Braxton
Soprano
Saxophone, Alto Saxophone [F Saxophone], Alto Saxophone, Clarinet
[E-flat Clarinet], Contrabass Clarinet – Anthony Braxton
Soprano Saxophone, Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet – James Fei 
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