Slow Six

“An orchestral band with an interesting twist, Slow Six have compiled this debut album from tracks they've recorded over the last four years, though none of it sounds in the least dated. The twist is the use of an active computer that takes in the sounds the members make and interprets them into what it will, used mainly in a live setting but put to slight use on these recordings, as well. The songs number three, with the shortest clocking in at almost nineteen minutes, and they represent a full range of emotions as well as variations in what the band is capable of. Each has its own breath and life, and moves with a spirit that feels like a wise and aged soul. To break these massive passages down to "the violin sounds great" is almost an insult to their beauty, but the instruments are played with great skill and passion, and the music becomes more lovely with every replay. Violin, viola, and cello are joined with guitars and Rhodes piano and the aforementioned computer instruments — no percussion. It's not missed or even needed, and the sounds all swirl together in an artful embrace.” - Brainwashed.com

“The three track longplayer from Slow Six spins down like a day in the life of...you, and it does so in such fashion that the exact day is not only blatantly specific, but ever changing depending where your head is at each particular time you listen to it. Set usually over a great bit of atmosphere by the rest of the troupe, Maxim Moston's violin surges through the first track, "This is Your Last Chance (Before I Sleep)" pushing the crisp top layer of music through the majority of it's twenty four minute existence. When Moston's violin does drop out of the aforementioned track, the first dose of the computer-as-instrument sees the light of day. Previously hiding underneath the prominent elements of the piece, everything gives way to a slightly altered rhodes sound aided ever so slightly by a slight bubbly ticking noise: enter the computer as an instrument.” - Onetimesone.com

“Uncommon serenity and lushness...a space of majestic respite from Lower East Side antics." - Flavorpill NYC

Private Times in Public Places - One of Time Out New York’s Top 10 Classical picks of 2004. “Composer and computer musician Chris Tignor’s Slow Six exists in a rarefied realm bordering on classical minimalism and post-rock chamber groups like Rachel’s. The band’s debut release, Private Times in Public Places, is a thing of rare, fragile beauty, urgently recommended to admirers of Brian Eno’s ambient music and West Coast minimalists like Ingram Marshall and Harold Budd.” - Time Out New York

Stylus Magazine Album of the Week, August 30th – September 5, 2004 - Stylus Magazine

These days on my computer, my default music player is iTunes, mostly because it makes using my iPod a whole hell of a lot easier. If you’ve ever used the program, I’m sure you’ve noticed how each CD or song is tagged with a genre. Sometimes these descriptions are roughly accurate and other times completely ridiculous. However, when the genre for Slow Six’s “Nor’easter” came up, I had to take note, because it articulated what I was already thinking about the album after a few listens. It deemed the disc “Unclassifiable.”

While familiar styles and instruments are incorporated into “Nor’easter,” the end product is unlike just about anything else. Included on the CD is violin, viola, cello, electric guitar, grand piano, Fender Rhodes electric piano, and computer effects. Using these elements, the group is able to play music that references classical music, jazz, solo electric guitar work, and modern drone and experimental works. Most times, these various styles sit comfortably next to one another in a single piece. If you can imagine a dream collaboration between Philip Glass, Miles Davis, Cluster, and Battles, you might have some idea of what Slow Six is capable of.

The amazing opening track “The Pulse of This Skyline With Lightning Like Nerves” is superficially the most classical sounding piece on “Nor’easter,” mainly because of the layered, orchestral sting parts. However, as the song progresses, it yields syncopated, nearly math rock, electric guitars and electric piano. This combination meshes surprisingly well as the strings provide a slower moving counterpart to the tense backgrounds. Another standout is the final track, “Distant Light, Part 2: ‘Now New Colors Fall Like Rain.’” Here, the classical strings come back, but this time the background is positively jazz-like. In fact parts of the song are somewhat reminiscent of “In A Silent Way,” that is if Miles Davis had wanted to use strings on that album.

“Nor’easter” is packed with many other stunning stylistic shifts that should be heard to be believed. Slow Six not only makes these changes interesting, but also very fluid and cohesive to the listener. One would not think that many of these pieces would fit together, but the group proves that they can. As a whole, the album is a rewarding experience for those who listen to music closely and carefully and/or enjoy when groups are able to stretch the boundaries of what is thought to be acceptable in any particular genre. Really, fans of any of the aforementioned styles should find themselves drawn to this music. 9/10 -- Matt Blackall (29 August, 2007) - Foxy Digitails

When the fireworks end, you've passed all the police checks out on the backroads, and you're safely home in one piece to recover from a long day of revels, Brooklyn's Slow Six will be waiting. In fact, they've been waiting for quite some time: The group has been around in one form or another since 1998 and they've been performing together live since 2000. Their debut LP, 2004's Private Times in Public Places, was a hailed masterwork of sounds meshing post-rock with the classical and producing something delicately detailed in between. You can ask "Time Out New York" or Stylus or WFMU, but they'll all tell you the same thing: This is some deeply touching music well worth your time and effort.

As the magnificent opener "The Pulse of This Skyline With Lightning Like Nerves" immediately demonstrates, the group has not lost its way or gunned for a dramatic reinvention. The spokesperson for the group has turned out to be Greenpoint-based Christopher Tignor, who has built his own studio there and tweaks a variety of instruments from electric guitars to violas. However, it's the digital aspect that has most captured the eye of live attendees and critics alike: By taking his knowledge of SWARM (SoftWare and Algorithms for Running on Multicore), which is a programming framework to speed up the efficiency of processors (I think), Tignor has designed music software personalized for his own needs in Slow Six. So when a violin or a piano is played, Tignor cleverly weaves the sampled bits back into the song as a sort of efficient reprocessing of his own. The effect is nothing less than totally organic.

It's a generally downbeat air on Nor'easter, but these songs don't come without their optimistic moments. The quietly drawn-out "Contemplation and Dissolution of An Idea for Two Pairs" is full of hope and a keen sense of contemplation as its title would suggest, but the piano lines during the course of the dissolution are almost angelic, like what you'd expect to hear as you ascend to the pearly gates. Or, alternately, it's what The Rapture would've sounded like if they'd taken a bigger hint from The Bible. Tension on "Distant Light, Part 1: Chromatic Clouds Surround" is relieved during the course of its nine minutes. "Distant Light, Part 2: Now New Colors Fall Like Rain" ends on a positive note.

These pieces are another fantastic outing for the Brooklyn six-piece and though it's likely I won't have the opportunity to see them live anytime soon, you should go experience Slow Six for yourself. Their music can be haunting, it can be thoughtful, it can be soaring, it can be resigned... But it is always good. If you thought you couldn't listen to classical beyond the obvious choice cuts from Wagner or Beethoven, Slow Six is a great excuse to delve back into orchestral music. Brilliant stuff. - Audiversity

New York experimentalists Slow Six are a community of musicians directed by band leader Christopher Tignor. With a sound that hovers intriguingly between modern classical and experimental electronic work, "Nor'easter's" six daunting movements brood with immersive tension.
Using his self-developed Echoustic software, Tignor manipulates guitarist Stephen Greisgraber's elliptical finger-picking on "Echolalic Transitions". Recording the notes his bandmate plays, Tignor's software allows him to mimic these sounds, while projecting them back in different patterns and formations. It results in an intimately warm and symmetrical rhythm, played entirely through guitar and machine, much like the way Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood continuously reformats and controls Thom Yorke's vocals during a live rendition of "Everything in Its Right Place".
With well over an hour's worth of music, "Nor'easter" is not the sort of album where you can be selective. This one requires your undivided attention form start to finish. If given, the listener will be undoubtedly rewarded with expert musicianship and compositions that journey straight from the heart. Indeed, there is such a prevalent sense of unity and understanding between band members, that it would seem Slow Six were born with their instruments attached.
The thoroughly engaging "The Pulse of This Skyline with Lightning like Nerves" moves in a theatrical manner, with agitated string arrangement weaving between the song's contours of pallid guitar rhythms. Creating a lulling, nocturnal ambiance, perhaps "The Pulse..." would be a suitable accompaniment for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven. Greisgraber's guitar, though, takes centre stage after ten intriguing minutes, creating an intricate, onomatopoeic tempo that braids with the prominent string progression.
You would imagine, had a composer such as Wagner been born this century, he would be experimenting with classical structures much like the reveries found on "Nor'easter". Refreshingly, Slow Six are a rare breed, a band not motivated by profit or critical acclaim. This is a band that thrives in the live arena, where they can bring their heartfelt, evolving sound to the masses. - Angry Ape

Bound to be one of the sleeper hits of the year, Nor'easter is a masterful collection of compositions from a collective who's quickly gaining notoriety on the east coast. Part classical, part avant garde, but always experimental, the album is perfect for those seeking a sound that is 'different' yet still crafted with utmost attention to detail and cohesive as a single unit. Six tracks spill over an hour's worth of material, creating an eerie journey that combines electronics and acoustics in a timely 21st century fashion, but within the context of a more antiquated framework. The result is a completely enthralling work of art; once the experience is instigated, we stare wide eyed until its completion. Clearly, this is one of the more gutsy and well executed albums of the year. Slow Six is a must have - 8/10 - The Silent Ballet

After the digital dust settled from the sampled electronic and ambient sounds of Arms and Sleepers and Helios, Slow Six took to the stage. It was already pretty dead at Hennessey’s Upstairs Rock Club, but for a Wednesday night in Boston with the Red Sox playing, this deadness is par for the course. People gathered around to see an interesting instrumental collective, that, comprised of two violins, a drummer, guitarist and keyboardist (strictly a Fender Rhodes), delivered what could only be described as otherworldly.

My expectations were high. I have been voyeuristically following this band for the past year. After an enlightening conversation with some of the band members, including frontman/artist director/founder Christopher Tignor, I thought I knew what they were all about. Well, kind of. Slow Six has one foot on the shifty shores of rock and one foot on the rocky crags of postmodern classicism. The rock roots seem to stem from Tignor’s, comment about the band’s beginnings: “I have always thought of this band as DIY. I mean, you build a loft in Brooklyn and you get people to come over because they happen to be excited for whatever reason about this, in some ways, ‘out-there’ music.” Most rock groups can empathize with this notion of doing it yourself and playing what you want to play regardless of or in response to the public consciousness.

While bands fall down that slippery slope of mass appeal, sometimes catalyzed by the big record labels, Slow Six, since its inception in 1999 released two records through New Albion, a big label in the context of contemporary classical art music. Yet, the slippery slope seems far in the horizon. Maybe this is because of the firmly placed foot in the world of postmodern classicism, which hearkens not to a certain aesthetic as much as an uncertain number of sonic possibilities that remain aloof of any genre. It may also help that the track record for New Albion tends to favor content over the net result of monetary income.

When Tignor started to talk about the Six’s aesthetic mantra, it gave me pause to think about why they were playing in a rock venue. “I think one of the things that this band has always been interested in (in many ways this is sort of part of our classical background) is a breath of either emotion or color or just going different places with the music; as opposed to delivering a focused rock band sound,” explored Tignor.

“In twenty seconds you can hear a rock band and know their sound. I think a lot of our songs intentionally explore different places, even within one song, as opposed to a song that is just an object. There is definitely breath in our music; it is something we’re good at.” Tignor further explained that “Our pieces have a development over time. They should have some effect on mental state: how you feel now, where you have been, and you are remembering the last section as a memory. How can you be here based on where you began?”

This principle of music with breath and development is what underpins the musical ideology of Slow Six. Furthermore, it is an ideology that flies in the face of the rock aesthetic, while fundamentally revering it. Although the process element of their music could be easily marginalized as a hijacking of postmodern minimalists like Reich and Riley from the classical concert music tradition, the process is still subsidiary to the musical telling and retelling of ideas. The keyboardist, Rob Collins emphasized the general sound of Slow Six. “There is a huge difference between cohesive and monochromatic and uninteresting. [The latest album] Nor’easter is diverse, but within a particular soundworld.”

As part of a promotion for Nor’easter, “These Rivers Between Us” opened up the set with an instant idea of Slow Six’s intentions: interaction and cohesiveness. Every rhythmic figure articulated seem to set in motion a development of musical material that proceeded in an arch-like form. At the apex of the music was a sustained interaction between the violinists (Christopher Tignor and Ben Lively). The simple act of pizzicato on the instruments was turned into a musical event as the sounds were altered by various pedaling presets. This moment became more interesting as Steve Griesgraber entered the fray with his guitar. It was moments like these where I realized that Slow Six isn’t really a rock band. And still, I don’t know what they are.

The longest of the set was “Clouds.” It unfolded for over fifteen minutes starting with a distant and heavily reverberating guitar tremolo, commencing with varying nuances of a simple, additive rhythm played by the violins. Near the end Tignor pulled a trick from his John Cage tool belt, grabbed a transistor radio, tuned it and placed it in front of a microphone.

The night’s treat was seeing the interactive piece “Echolalic Transitions” performed by Christopher Tignor at the keyboard with Steve Griesgraber on guitar. In real time, Tignor took various parts of Griesg - Impose Magazine