Nothing Left to Destroy
The new MC Maguire CD, ‘Nothing left to Destroy’, is the follow up to ‘Trash of Civilizations’ (2009) and ‘Meta-Conspiracy’ (2007). Once again up to 300 tracks of CPU [that’s Central Processor Unit to non-computer folk] mayhem, subterfuge, chicanery, skullduggery, and a smidgen of jiggery-pokery are pitted against a virtuosic live soloist, in a to-death-do-us-part showdown. The overall effect is electro-acoustic, ethno-death-metal, versus environmental, classical-fusion-electronica in a UFC cage [not John-] match. The first piece is a Violin Concerto featuring the musical wunderkind, Ben Bowman. Mr. Bowman soars, bops and weaves over an alternately ominous and ecstatic shrinking/claustrophobic CPU landscape which consists of all things Chinese (including a famous ancient Chinese melody as the cantus firmus). It eventually morphs into the tragic irony of 70’s, western, 4 on the floor, disco. In the end it’s a melancholic commentary on western hegemony. The second work is a Flute Concerto, featuring the seasoned, uber-virtuoso, Doug Stewart. He nimbly leaps, dodges, and swirls around three mashed George Gershwin songs in a quasi, dirty-thirties dream world. The real raison d’être of this piece is it’s hell bent on blurring the numbers 2 and 3 in a beyond-human range of tempos. MC Maguire is a Toronto based electro-acoustic manipulator who has worked in every medium and genre as a composer/producer/engineer.
