Churn Works, Seven (2026) is based on seven  improvisations using a rusty butter churn/egg beater as seen in the banner above. An aunt of mine made her butter from such a device attached to a jar full of cream on a remote Minnesota farm where she raised pigs, sheep, crops and one Holstein cow used for all their dairy needs. Just outside her kitchen door, there was on a bell on a pole with a rope to call her eight kids in for meals, or bedtime... When I spotted this churn at a thrift store in Watertown, I grabbed it giving it a hesitant spin and was transported back to the 1950s and 60s where favorite cousins tried teaching me to ride a boar, a massive squeeling pig, that scared hell out of me. But I deeply loved this rugged home, it impacting my aesthetics to this very day.

The rugged sounds of these improvisations, are dedicated to all my cousins, their mother, and my indomitable Anny Vanny who often worked one handed while reading any book she could find with the other.

This is my second experience with 32-bit float technology having recently purchased such a  recording device. Like my first experience, recorded in a highly specialized isolation booth doubling as a guest room closet, I found recording AND post production different from any previous related experience.

Performance Strategies

Churn Works, Seven may be performed sequentially, 1-7, with a brief silence between sections, as given in the middle column here. The sequence may be changed willy nilly. Any number of the works may be presented alone or combined with other sections. They may be presented as a stereo-quad work, a quad work with one section played over the front speakers, another over the back speakers simultaneously or interwoven gradually. The sections may be interspersed between other compositions on a concert or used as dance accompaniment. Contact the composer at rakutoo (at) icloud dot com for the high quality 32-bit float .wav performance version. DS041026

Dan Senn (Prague-Watertown) is an intermedia artist working in music composition and production, kinetic sound sculpture, experimental and documentary film. He has been a professor of music and art in the United States and Australia and travels internationally as a lecturer, performer, producer and installation artist. He lives in Prague where he directs the Echofluxx festivals, and Watertown, Wisconsin, the USA, with his partner-collaborator, Caroline. Dan's work moves freely between expressive extremes and languages depending on the aesthetic joust at hand. He is cofounder of Roulette Intermedium of New York Cty (Brooklyn), Cascadia Composers of Portland Oregon, and the Echofluxx media festivals in Prague. (read more)