Years ago, Mike Tamburo had an epiphany while tuning a guitar: it’s possible to use the “beating” of two strings, with slightly different frequencies, to adjust the tuning to the same pitch. Those slight differences in frequency between two almost-equal tones can create a mini universe of pulsations and rhythms, shifting, overlapping patterns and fluttering sounds that seem to pop in and out of symmetry. It’s a point at which the nature of the vibrations that make up sound waves and music can almost feel tangible. That ear-opening experience led the Pittsburgh-bred musician down the path he’s on today, making hypnotic vibration-centric music. Tamburo is guided by the delight he finds in the resonant hum and ring of trembling metal. He spent most of 2019 traveling around the country, lugging his gongs in a van, setting up his elaborate rig in yoga studios, galleries and other non-standard performance spaces. And now, especially, he is missing that sense of community. “I really hope that my life doesn’t turn into my just being on a computer screen,” Tamburo says. Earlier this year, he released Mike Tamburo Plays Metal, a deeply meditative wash of gong sounds. A track like “Lasting Waves” can seem to be almost empty, until the ear tunes into the low rumble and slow churn that emerges like the warm glow of a sunrise. Tamburo played in punk bands in Pittsburgh before taking an interest in gamelan and avant-garde music. Over the past dozen years or so, he’s released scores of records using everything from electronics to dulcimer, harmonica, guitars and other instruments. Even with such varied instrumentation, there’s a unified style. One can hear the slow ascending and descending intervallic logic of Tamburo’s sound world. “I take a primitive approach to almost everything that I do,” says Tamburo, who spent much of the year in isolation in his parents’ base[1]ment, working on new material, conducting online classes and experimenting with a set of new tuned gongs. Tamburo’s work is often marked by glacial pacing. It doesn’t necessarily leave you humming a melody, but the warm and stately vibrations are captivating and transfixing. “I had an interest in long sustained sounds even at an early age,” he says. “It felt like there was some kind of information in the way tones interacted with each other that was really meaningful to me.”