For someone who came out of the Philadelphia rock scene, David First (b. 1953) has kept strangely distant from rock. Instead, he's fascinated by acoustic phenomena, particularly those caused by ultra-slow pitch bending. This sounds abstract, but First's music isn't. His sound assemblages of synthesizers guitars, and drums create moving masses of sound whose wildly changing beats raise the hair on the back of your neck. Often a First piece will start out with just a drone or chord, and you'll think for a minute or so that nothing's happening. But without you noticing it, the music will start to warp out of tune, and then saturate the room with charged musical energy, and you're hooked.

Of the discs below, Resolver is a collection of short works, some of them gripping. But the real stunner is The Good Book's (Accurate) Jail of Escape Dust Coordinates (First has a penchant for elaborately enigmatic titles). It's an hour-long continuum that rarely moves very fast, but never stays in the same place. Think of First as really loud Alvin Lucier, or else Glenn Branca without the heavy beat. - Kyle Gann

Resolver, O.O. Discs #5

The Good Book's (Accurate) Jail of Escape Dust Coordinates, O.O. Discs #23

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