an anthology of noise & electronic music / fourth a-chronology 1937 – 2005 [coll] – [Sub Rosa]

angel   5/16/2006   A Library, CD

Here are thoroughly inspiring examples of the potential of the human brain combined with machine to create mathematics, pictures, ideas, emotions, and spirit, in music and sound. The trans-global artists use computers to compose, computers to emanate, and other machines to weave other dreams. They create their own instruments, programmes, layers of process, patterns, equations, collages, and concepts: figments as noise and noise as music and music as a physical experience. Abstract to melodic to spacey to inexplicable, this is a glittering array of drones, tones, blips, static slurps, natural environments, and voice. Halim el-Dabh’s 1944 piece is a recent discovery and pre-dates the work by Pierre Schaeffer that was previously credited as the first musique concr’te. The booklet provides fascinating biographies and historical notes. It is vital to preserve these descriptions, techniques, processes, and recordings! Bless the people who recognize that and release works like this series! I would have preferred more from the WWII era, but that may be already amply included in other collections. This series is good at blending the old masters with underground brilliance. Over two hours of material, from 1937-2005, highlights certain artists, certain eras: sparks in human evolution, our leap from a type zero to a type one civilization, terrestrial to planetary? *
– anjl