Antony Widoff – Disposition

While Widoff is hardly a household name, his miles-long resumé includes stints supporting the likes of U2, Frank Zappa, Matthew Barney and Bill Bruford as a producer, keyboardist, technical artist, composer and sound designer. His multimedia installation work has also been featured in institutes of higher art around the world.

A long time side man, his job was to parse, understand and implement cutting edge music technologies for artists operating across an insanely broad range of genres and creative disciplines. Disposition collects recordings that functioned as demomstrations of the software created by Intelligent Music, Widoff’s employer.

A mixture of open-ended session recordings where Widoff allowed the software to run endlessly in a generative process and more intentional performances, the music collected here was ironically not the end product of the artist’s own inspiration or creative process; rather, it is the byproduct of his line of work. Inspiration was taken from the software itself, however, as Widoff found himself intrigued by the workflow or peculiarities of a specific programming environment. Over time, he became increasingly enamored of what was referred to as “interactive algorithmic composition software.”

Largely recorded in Widoff’s bedroom when he lived in Woodstock, NY, these recordings were finalized in Albany, NY at the late Richard Lainhardt’s studio on an early PCM F-1 digital mastering system.