Tool

Programme Notes

Tool is a piece I composed for inclusion on my band’s album, Strange Machine, as a way to create an instrumental interlude between songs. The album’s concept revolved around the idea of machines and how we control them—and how they, in turn, control us. Tool turned out to be the perfect piece to explore motoric minimalism, a compositional style trait that tends to be quite common in my more “classical” compositions.

However, this impersonal, stoic repetition also symbolizes our world’s tendency toward mass industrialization at any cost, resulting in widespread environmental degradation. We use tools to achieve this, but in essence, we are the true mindless tools, manipulated by corporate powers.

– Frank Horvat