Review Text
Ten works of electronic music from a ten-year period: an ode to synthesis. Dekagon is a journey into Anil Çamci's sonic worldmaking with each piece leveraging a different synthesis tool or technique from custom designs to timeless classics. As spectrum, dynamics, space, and time become continuous dimensions of musical articulation, Dekagon moves the listener between the physical reality of their listening environment and an implied universe grounded in sound. This movement between sonic spaces is shaped by Çamci's meticulous exploration of audio processing and synthesis. The opening piece, A Now Unknown is the outcome of forty performances with a Eurorack modular synthesizer carried out over the course of two years. The following piece, Yonder in Bedlam, was composed in it's entirety using a Moog synthesizer. Temas is the result of live improvisations with a stochastic synthesizer designed by Çamci. Then, the use of granular synthesis in Diegese is an homage to Çamci's former teacher Curtis Roads' homage to his former teacher Morton Subotnick. With each piece, the listener can either be immersed as part of the unfolding narrative or be situated as an onlooker that observes the implied universe of the piece. Either way, the listening experience is highly associated with visual imagery and imagination. This album is also at the center of Çamci's book "The Cognitive Continuum of Electronic Music," which was published by Bloomsbury in 2022 as part of their Music and Sound Studies series. The book chronicles a listening study conducted with four of the tracks in this album with eighty participants from around the world. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective towards auditory perception, it details the intricate relationship between electronic music and listeners.
