by Justin Davidson
Justin.Davidson@nymag.com
The dauntless new music group Alarm Will Sound is embarking on another of its crazy projects. Having orchestrated the electronica of Aphex Twin, dispatched Varèse's Intégrales, and turned the Shaggs's implausibly incompetent–or is it sublimely virtuosic?–folk into concert music, the group has now turned its attention to the Year of Madness, 1969. It will be a while before the project gels in its full multimedia glory, but the repertoire gets its first public outing in two performances this weekend at The Kitchen. Today I sat in on a rehearsal for "Revolution No. 9," an obsessively accurate transcription of that signal event in the history of organized delirium. Suffice it to say that at one point a percussionist asked other players to move away so they wouldn't be hit by shards of flying glass.
