A major component of this piece is the visual of the four saxophone players circling the pillar, almost ritualistically, while they perform the piece. The players have to memorize their choreography (although the Collide quartet did mark a few color-coded cheats on the pillar, which are now a part of the artwork too) and remember which parts of each face to play and when to play them. There's a relatively small amount of music on the pillar, but the piece evolves and develops due to the style of each instrument, the relative timing of entrances, and the differing transpositions of the four instruments. I'll explain this last point in the next paragraph, which those of you already familiar with transposition can skip.

The soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone play music that looks the same. Even though the soprano is MUCH higher-pitched than the baritone, their bottom and top notes are notated in exactly the same place on the staff. This is how I'm able to write a single line of music and have it be playable by any of the instruments. If I write an E♭ at the top of the treble clef, then all four instruments might call it E♭, but the pitches that come out will be D♭ on the soprano, G♭ on the alto, a lower D♭ on the tenor, and an even lower bass-clef G♭ on the baritone. I exploit these different transpositions in order to get harmony and wider range out of the saxophone quartet, even though they're reading the same line.

And so anyway, the players move around the pillar and the piece gains its structure as a result. The "grunge" section takes advantage of the nature of saxophone tranpositions to create a huge power chord fanfare. We then hear a lonely saxophone playing a bunch of short, disconnected notes (a failed attempt at the "hocket" section) while the other saxes play a series of soft harmonies (these latter changing as the players randomly "rotate" around the pillar and play whatever note hits their eyes.)

One of the saxophones begins playing the somber "mobile" melody. As can be seen in the second to last picture on the images page, this is a melody which has multiple different pathways, sort of like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books you might have read as a kid. Every time a player repeats the melody they randomly choose a different pathway. As this continues, the short disconnected notes from earlier return, but now with two players instead of one. This begins to reveal the "hocket", though it is still fairly disjunct.

I should explain, for those who don't know, that a hocket is a musical form first written in the Rennaisance, wherein a single melody is chopped up so that each successive note is played by the next instrument. It is very difficult to perform well, but these guys are amazing.

Another saxophone joins in on the mobile melody, but they each take their own paths and never line up. The other pair plays through the "rotate" chords again. The original melody-playing sax leaves and joins this pair in an even closer version of the "hocket" which is now only missing one player, but has everyone on the wrong pillar face, and thus the wrong notes come out.

Everyone leaps to play the rotate chords one last time, now quite loudly. Finally united in purpose again, the hocket commences now with all of the notes sounding (notice that the gaps are gone) and everyone playing the correct side of the pillar. Then, finally, the "grunge" section from the beginning returns. However, two of the instruments are playing different sides of the pillar, and the harmony is a slightly broken variant of the original incarnation. The piece ends with a lovely bit of nastiness as each player performs their loudest, honkiest notes and/or multiphonics.