Open Symmetry is New York-based composer Tristan Perich’s first release on Erased Tapes. The 50-minute work for 3 vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics is performed by the dynamic French group, ensemble 0, who return to Erased Tapes following their 2023 collaboration with Peter Broderick.

Perich’s music spans the electronic/classical divide, with explorations that pair string instruments, piano, organ, and other acoustic instrumentation with custom-built 1-bit electronics, including his recent Drift Multiply, for 50 violins and 50 speakers. This newest release, Open Symmetry, pares the ensemble down to just 3 musicians playing the resonant metal bars of 3 vibraphones accompanied with a glistening ensemble of 20 speakers, each playing their own separate musical part of the composition.

1-bit sound is Perich’s core musical language, creating an aural and conceptual consistency across his major works. His 2004 release, 1-Bit Music, was the first album released as a microchip, which plays its music through a headphone jack in the side of the CD case that houses an electronic circuit. With 1-bit sound, the audio waveform is built from 1s and 0s, the binary language of information, in contrast to the perpetual stride towards higher fidelity with 16- or 24-bit, and most recently 32-bit audio. When stripping away all those bits, the result is a primitive, square-shaped tone, which Perich either presents on its own (as in his circuit albums or solo shows), or blends it with classical instrumentation, each composition an experiment in sonic color, shape, and form.

Open Symmetry was born out of an artistic connection between Perich and ensemble 0, in particular one of its members, Stéphane Garin, whom Perich first met in New York in 2014 when Garin was touring with Ryoji Ikeda. Garin had already been playing Perich’s existing music live, but it was at this point that he decided to commission a brand new piece by him, which eventually became Open Symmetry. From their first conversations, they knew it would be a large project, which Perich ultimately scored for 3 vibraphones and his 1-bit electronics. ensemble 0 premiered the piece in 2019 at Le Lieu Unique’s Variations Festival in Nantes, and after touring it for a few years, they recorded it for this album release.

For fans of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley