March 27, 2012
By Susan Marie Kovalinsky
Greek musician's eerie dissonance not subject to mania, but subtle, profound:
Substant's Abstruse
::::::::
GREEK MUSICIAN'S EERIE DISSONANCE NOT SUBJECT TO MANIA, BUT SUBTLE, PROFOUND: ABSTRUSE
Substant's Abstruse Ivory Tower was listed in the top 10 albums of the avante garde metal web journal Avantgarde Metal(avantgarde-metal.com) in 2010. An opener to a new album to be released in 2012, will be featured in a nationally syndicated U.S.
press release, and on New York talk radio in August 2012).
The Athenian plans to continue exploring and expanding the order-based system he utilizes, and to
work on the analogical relationships between different senses such as visual to sound combinations to odour-producing smokes, lights e.t.c. This holistic approach is a part of Abstruse's philosophy; bringing to mind the early 20th century works of Kandinsky. Additionally, the gestalt theory gives some hints about how does this '
work', fueling Substant's hope to rejuvenate these relationships by improving on a program he designed in 2007, called
motion2sound, which decodes motion properties into sound properties. The program participated in two international conferences for innovation.
"Basically we are autodidacts. Although I am very interested in studying the 20th century and contemporary music. Thus a minor in music back in the university along with some good courses and ''extracurricular'' books really helped. For the visual part now Veiler founded his own forms in digital art and he is still studying
graphic design . My specialization back in the university was film studies with two senior projects in Video Art. Now for the secret order part...It speaks about..uhm..orders! These are patterns of intervals or motifs that are used in Abstruse's music and represent different musical characters to give a short description. Order also is a musical language that counts intervals as digits (such as semitones) thus departing from conventional scores. The most important thing about them is that you can see very clearly the numerical relationships of the intervals with the characters produced and thus construct new ones by combining their properties. Also the patterns have an
identity on their own without the need to refer to modes or scales.
Majestic scale is the order of [1-3-2-1-3-2] series (counting in semitones from the root note and then from the next one). In a way it's Abstruse'
invention though to tell everything it can be derived from the diminished scale (half-tone, tone...), but there is an effort for a 'tonal majestic' system that uses hierarchical relationships between the notes such as in major or minor systems."