Richard Lainhart

In sleevenotes to Richard Lainhart's 2001 release Ten Thousand Shades Of Blue, his composition teacher Joel Chadabe recalls that when they first met, at the start of the 1970s, the question in the air was, "what were the special musical things you could do with electronics?" Lainhart's answer, Chadabe continues, was "a new kind of constructivism based on sounds that are only about themselves and their transformations". The resulting music may be self-referential, but Lainhart's enduring interest in natural processes - water flowing, cloud patterns, the play of flames, wind moving through trees - provides a ready parallel for the way he works with processes in sound.

All four pieces on The Wave-Sounding Sea were recorded at the State University of New York, Albany in 1973 and 1974, using the state-of-the-art Coordinated Electronic Music Studio System developed by Chadabe in association with Robert Moog. The title track is a darkly pulsating Morton Subotnick-influenced soundscape, brooding and non-human. With Iron Hill Lainhart found his own voice. It was the first realization of his One Sound concept, which delivers what it says, a 12-minute organ-like blast, massive but teeming with inner life. Snow is a very different One Sound composition, brittle and closely focused, situated ambivalently between shortwave sferics and crackling ice.

The remaining track, FM Automat, is an experimental exercise, a discontinuous series of electronic events generated using a single frequency modulation patch. Its effect resembles casting your eye across related shades in a color chart. Lainhart's mature work has something of the appeal of Eliane Radigue's music, constant yet discreetly developmental and secretly rich in detail. The Wave-Sounding Sea shows him working towards that.

Julian Cowley
The Wire 317
July, 2010 - The Wire 317 July, 2010

"Composure also seemed to be a strength of Richard Lainhart's music at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation April 6. Just as Suzuki maintained his curiosity throughout an evening of experiments with sound, Lainhart maintained a tone of quiet warmth and even reverence throughout three tape pieces, each a half-hour or so long. They seemed to grow more peaceful and profound as they went on, and justified titles like "Bronze Cloud Disk" and "Cities Of Light", which seemed to evoke feelings that can't quite be named, and suggest music I might rather imagine for myself in silence than trust most composers to compose."

Gregory Sandow - Village Voice, May 27, 1981

"More successful aesthetically because the system worked were tone essays by Richard Lainhart, who transformed Chadabe's program into an Eno-ish wash of sensual tone decays. Soft chords formed a suspended background for loud attacks that took an eternity to die away, and the aptly titled "Ten Thousand Shades of Blue" diminuendoed into ambiguously bittersweet dissonance. A more industrial-strength work, "Paint Test Area", smashed together repetitive patterns of heavy, rebounding noises. The Russian and Italian Futurists of the 1920s would have given their right hands to produce sonatas such as this, and had they seen Lainhart achieve his results with only the tiniest of finger movements, they would have dropped dead from envy."

Kyle Gann - Village Voice, January 10, 1989

"Alternately using synthesizer and vibes, Lainhart sustains and amplifies a profoundly tranquil ambience from start to finish." - Keyboard Magazine (1987)

"From the earliest... to the most recent.. these pieces all unfold from what appears to be the same deep, interior landscape. Curiously elusive but distinctly 'real' music." - Gramophone, The Classical Music Magazine (2001)

"He's evolved a singular vision as a composer, performer and engineer of darkly seductive minimalism... Rewarding, engaging music that's worth your time."

Peter Marsh - BBC (2002)

"White Night" proceeds slowly, with carefully modulated sine waves and shifting tones interacting subtly across four tracks like a tempered music of the spheres. ... perfectly ambient, a long, deep, thirty-minute exhalation of breath. A very beautiful release that seems totally modern... that I can't recommend highly enough. - Other Music (2008)

"Two highly talented keyboardists, a drool-worthy collection and instruments, and trippy projected video: Such are the ingredients in Jordan Rudess' and Richard Lainhart's DVD A Fistful of Patchcords, recorded from a live 2006 concert. The footage makes it abundantly clear that Jordan (already idolized for his work with Dream Theater) and Richard are synthesis masters. In their hands, spacey jams evolve full of emotion and nuance, making excellent use of both old-school analog and cutting-edge digital sound sources. Unusual for sure, but highly creative, musical, and satisfying."

Michael Gallant - Keyboard Magazine, February 2007

"Many contemporary musicians take their inspiration from natural processes. Lainhart's musical models come from clouds, flames and waves, whose nebulous and ever shifting formations are the catalyst for his beautiful electronic works."

Caleb Deupree - Furthernoise, November 2008