Phinga Phuckery

Original piano solo work.
Level: Advanced.
🎧 Audio and full description below.
 
About this Composition:
In stark contrast to Tin Pan Alley, the atmosphere for the latest iteration of postmodern ragtime is electric. It’s stuttery, fluttery and a-fib. This is a vulgar, uncouth, loutish exploration of a fusion of classical and contemporary piano styles, a hundred years of tinkling the ivories (not tusks, please). This verges on the pianist experiencing whiteout from the black keys and blackouts from the white. No, to reflect on Scott Joplin or Art Tatum. There is NO time to waste. We commence proceedings parallel to ragtime, with an opening unfit for Joplin, unless he’s on shrooms. Things soon turn to technocracy, with electric staccato pulses, binary codes and hash pipes and tags. Low grade micro stride pulsates, without a cause or a calculated kernel of sentimentality. This is about speed, about finishing before we get to the end, like a fantasy fit for an underdeveloped individual. Human fuses with tech, as the piano ramps up, making the double escapement hammer action earn its keep. The piece already takes a wrong turn and heads into oncoming traffic, sour, close to curdle, rotting in real time as a motif more at home in rock commences. If you can find something to like in this ghastly, grotesque display of quivering and quavering dissonance, congratulations and well done. The ending is best left unplayed, or attempted only with access to a defibrillator. The notes welling up like a backed-up, tired limbic system or an unrelenting wave of 24-hour news cycle propaganda, just as a police helicopter circles overhead. Which, like any musical ponzi scheme, comes to a crashing halt, like a targeted black operation to snuff out a tent full of unknown suspects.