With the SubTrap-stacked Servo-15 back in play, the bass was transformed. I thought I'd had it pretty good before, but now there was more bass detail, and so much deeper than I expected. In fact, I had to rebalance the subwoofer levels; pre-SubTrap, my ears and my SPL meter had been deceived by the encumbered resonances. With the true bass levels restored (and my wife outside in the garden), I unleashed my inner bass freak with Von Kessel's Requiem (SACD, VK3583). This disc has lots of spacey synthesizer sounds compounded with assorted percussion (especially gongs!), but track 2, aptly titled "From DC to 60Hz Ahmmm," was particularly powerful. The combo of Servo-15 and SubTrap filled the room with throbbing, tuneful bass that moved me, but not the floorboards or the furniture. Ah, yes-glorious bass without the boom!

Speaking of electronic music, this 17-movement work sounds to be in that genre, but is ostensibly created with large Chinese gongs. The low frequency information here is extremely strong and there is a warning about damaging speakers at too high a playback level. This is not the scratchy sort of sound from John Cage or Stockhausen rubbing a contact mic around a large gong, but rather smooth and slowly flowing sounds that are sort of like a low-frequency music of the spheres. It bears some resemblance to trancelike works such as Alvin Lucier’s Music on a Long Wire. Some of the movements have titles such as Bardo, relating to The Tibetan Book of the Dead; another is just called Prayer 1584. The spatial element is extremely vital to this very minimalist and meditative sound sculpture.