Spike Mason's OXIMETRIC

"A blend of beauty and tension." Spike has been a PhD candidate at UTAS for the past four years researching his original Oximetric music. The oximetric concept involves the execution of a largely unfamiliar performance practice within jazz ensemble music. Each musician within the ensemble plays melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic material, either composed or improvised, within their own unrelated pulse. 

The musicians, although playing at the same time, do not adhere to a shared pulse, time signature, or groove. Each of the pulses are played with the goal to maintain a sense of the individual. There is no need for them to start or finish together. The pulses are not rhythmic subdivisions of each other or related mathematically. They are separate voices that create a synergy by being sounded together in the same sonic space, and sharing a common intent, or mood. 

The oximetric concept incorporates archetypal rhythms that are…