Starts out innocently enough, with some nice guitar strumming. But then a line is added, tuned ever so slightly off, and that does it. No matter how sweetly the guitar plays for the rest of the piece, it’s almost always got wild electric noises swirling about it, some of them distortions of the guitar itself, but most of them electronic buzzes and swishes and snarls, which the guitarist eventually comes to match in intensity if not in sound (and acoustic guitars can make some very gnarly noises, as anyone with Lachenmann’s Salut für Caudwell on their shelf already knows). Waves of refraction is a very tasty little piece, indeed. I wish it were longer.

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