63 Tripled Units in a 64 Span, Tune by 65daysofstatic

65daysofstatic is a twenty-first-century English experimental band. Their techno-infused track "The Distant and Mechanised Glow of Eastern European Dance Parties" appears on their third album, The Destruction of Small Ideas, which was released in the United States on the first of this month twelve years ago. Below is a YouTube recording of the track, and below that is an annotated transcription of the snare drum, kick drum, and synthesized bass from 2:09-2:55.

Before the drums recuperate at 2:16 the 4/4 time signature that has governed the track since its beginning, the synth lays down a repeating pattern of sixteenth-then-eighth, creating a three-sixteenth pulse that cuts first against the implied continuation of 4/4 and then against an explicit 4/4 when the drums re-enter. At first, it seems as if the synth bass's triple pulse will stubbornly continue its transversality. But at 2:27 it resets as it drops the octave, starting again with the sixteenth-then-eighth rhythm on the downbeat as it did when it first entered. It then resets like this every four measures, simultaneous with a change of register. Therefore, during of these four-measure spans from 2:27 to 2:55, the synth bass delivers 21 of the sixteenth-then-eighth successions, shown with the blue brackets. These total to 63 sixteenths (21 successions times 3 sixteenths each), which is one sixteenth shy of 64, the number of sixteenths in four measures of 4/4. Each of the two yellow brackets indicate this single-sixteenth difference. 

In an article where he investigates the general phenomenon of a string of threes unfolding over, but then giving way to, pure duple meter, Richard Cohn shares an awareness of examples that do so over a 64-unit pure-duple span: Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine" and some music of Brazilian jazz guitarist Baden Powell de Aquino. However, in none of these examples does the string immediately repeat. At the least, this passage from 65daysofstatic provides an example that does.

But, moreover, this passage provides a compromise between the two extremes I put forth in my earlier blog post expanding upon Cohn's article. In that post, I offered two abstract examples in which, in the first, an onset in the triple pattern never falls on the start of a duple span, and, in the second — the complement of the first — an onset in the triple pattern always falls on the start of a duple span.

This passage from 65daysofstatic falls in between. Sometimes a synth-bass onset does fall on the beginning of a duple span, as shown with the 4 and 16 in green in my annotations. Sometimes a synth-bass onset does not fall on the beginning of a duple span, as shown with the 2, 8, and 32 in red in my annotations. One could hear this as a cycle, undulating between working with and working against a meter that is duple on all levels. In his discussion of a similar phenomenon in Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing," Cohn refer to this cycle as "a wave of release and relock."

However, as cycles go, an oscillating cycle is arguably less interesting than a cycle with more than two members. To get a cycle of four members, one can use a string of five units. To restate the challenge at the end of my February 2019 post, there is a 23-second passage in a well-known song by a progressive rock band that does exactly this. I plan to blog about this music at some point, but I would much prefer it if, before then, someone else found it, revealed it, and maybe even analyzed it in a comment below. Here's a hint: the band is Yes.