Keen, Jeff – “Noise Art” – [Trunk Records]

surferrosa   6/19/2013   A Library, CD

Jeff Keen (1923-2012) is a visual and sonic artists/experimentalist from London famed for creating strange films with stranger sound tracks. There don’t seem to be many collections of his sonic work outside of this compilation. The sounds here were collected from tapes found in Keen’s house, home made recordings created with a mic, tape recorder, atari computer, ZX Spectrum computer, a Binson echo unit and home made instruments. These are experimentations in voice and audio manipulation. Keen takes his spoken work type poetry, cuts it up, loops, layers and stutters. The noise part of this is accounted for by all sorts of analog manipulations and contorted computer sounds. Some of these tracks contain old radio samples, sounds like being stuck between stations, others will make you feel like you are being possessed by a broken, old school gaming system. -Surfer Rosa