New Discovery

As regular readers of S&F are aware, we're not exactly fans of most so-called New Music with its obsessive concern with process and sound per se and its lack of concern with sustained, coherent, perceptible, and comprehensible musical narrative. Every once in a great while, however, we come across what is almost an anomaly today in new concert music: a genuinely haunting piece of New Music whose musical narrative grabs one from the first measure, and holds one fast through the last.

Listen:

Surely, some heretofore undiscovered or as-yet-not-widely-known contemporary composer worthy of note, right?

Wrong.

It's a Justin Bieber thing (yes, that Justin Bieber; Justin Bieber the pop phenom) — slowed down 800 (eight-hundred) per cent. Here's the original.

We're not at all sure what this says about process, but that it says something worth noting is indisputable.

(Our thanks to Gawker via Daniel Wolf's Renewable Music for the links.)