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low pass
low pass is comprised of percussionists/sound artists Rob Cosgrove (Minneapolis) and Taylor Long (North Dakota / New York). The project’s focus is centered on performing works primarily written by and for the ensemble, particularly by emerging composers. Although ostensibly a percussion duo, this project foregrounds interests in electronics, repurposed objects, noise, and improvisation. Recent activities include the premiere of Eric Lemmon’s large-scale work Reticulations for percussion duo and live electronics at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), low pass’s debut album four drums for speakers, a performance at Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium (Portugal), and an ongoing collaboration with Minnesota composer Scott L. Miller titled Figure and Ground.

four speakers for drums

New Music/Research
New Music/Research PresentsLive

Stations is an iterative multi-channel broadcast feedback project conceived by low pass member Rob Cosgrove and developed by the duo in a variety of formats/settings. Using different formations of snare drums and radios, sound becomes a guide through shifting textural landscapes. First developed as an installation piece for the Bard Center for Experimental Humanities, Stations has also been performed as a traditional "concert" work and recorded as half of low pass's debut release "four speakers for drums”

Stations creates a rhizomatic feedback system performance piece about hearing movement and the transportive qualities of radio. Through tactility, radio can transport / be transported by the listener; each stopping point accessed through a tunnel of noise. A non-linear procession through gallery spaces and interconnected hallways: a constellation of satellite sonic tableaus unfolds as performers, radios and microphones shift in spatial relationality.

The work repurposes radios as feedback instruments, manipulating and spatializing the sound of the snare drums in a dynamic, teeming structured improvisation. The proximity, angle, and formation of the sounding objects on stage create new textures and drones for the duo to interact with. Each performance is unique depending on the performance acoustics and environment, each time building a new site-specific and site-reactive sonic architecture.

Stations is representative of the personalized practice low pass has developed over the past five years as a duo. It relies on a combination of standard percussion instruments/techniques and highly specific technological interventions; it lacks a notated score, but is structured in such a way that similar events occur in each performance; finally, it largely eschews notions of teleology, instead prioritizing explorations and interactions of sound and form as inherently self-worthy.