Dystonia

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Composer JG Thirlwell may be best known as the creator of music for adult cartoons. Although the five contemporary works on Dystonia are cut from a completely different cloth than that, they perhaps share with cartoon scores a certain aesthetic of intensified excitement that is rendered well by the Mivos Quartet. Four of the five pieces suggest illness or phobia (the title of Apeirophobia, the final work, offers listeners a $64,000 vocabulary word meaning "fear of the infinite"). So does the title, Dystonia, meaning involuntary movements. Sharp, stabbing chords alternate with a more legato idiom that predominates in a couple of the shorter pieces (Narcolepsy is not the soporific piece that one might suppose). The Mivos Quartet specializes in the edgier forms of contemporary acoustic chamber music, and they are in their element here. Even listeners less sympathetic to contemporary music may find that these examples, with their feeling of overwhelming unease, resonate with their experiences.
© James Manheim /TiVo