I love this story. Not long after The Who conceived, produced and recorded their rock opera Tommy, Pete Townshend started work on a follow up sci-fi rock opera. It is a continuing project that has just seen the light of day through the combined talent of Lawrence Ball and Pete Townshend.
London-based composer & mathematician Lawrence Ball's forthcoming double CD-set Method Music was not only produced by Townshend, but it was also the direct outcome of Townshend's ongoing Lifehouse project. (Sci -fi rock opera)
A central theme in the plot of the Lifehouse story, which is set in a futuristic scene where rock ’n’ roll doesn't exist, is that a secret concert was staged where each individual audience member entered their personal characteristics into a computer grid and a unique piece of music - based on their personal data - would be generated. The culmination of the concert came after all of the individuals' characteristics were fed into a computer at the same moment, leading to one 'perfect' musical note culminating in mass nirvana that Townshend described as ‘a kind of celestial cacophony.’Lawrence Ball describes the evolution of the album "Method Music ".
"Method Music evolved from Pete Townshend's question to me about generating unique pieces of music from the input of personal characteristics as data, a question related closely to his ongoing project Lifehouse. I wanted to see what the music could sound like prior to designing the proposed system of portraiture, and I created the tracks on Disc One: Imaginary Sitters, as a touchstone towards designing the software which would eventually execute the task itself."
What you hear on METHOD MUSIC evolved from the tests conducted by Ball and Townshend, which proved the viability of The Lifehouse Method system. Disc One, Imaginary Sitters, features a disparate set of portraits designed to showcase the potential diversity of the Method, while Disc Two, Imaginary Galaxies, expands the forms into larger structures with greater permutations, variables, and variety.
Lawrence Ball's METHOD MUSIC was produced by Pete Townshend & Bob Lord and will be available worldwide January 31, 2012 on CD and Digital formats through Navona Records
