Experimental Audio Research
Exposition Stylus Re-mixed
Ochre
2003
F
weet Merciful Christ on a pancake. This is what’s wrong with electronic music today.
Usually, I like things that are experimental. I am a big fan of audio. And I would characterize myself as pro-research. But when you put those three things together, you come up with an experimental side project of someone unfortunately named Sonic Boom. And this remix album is honestly one of the worst things I have heard pressed onto a CD in a long time.
It’s one long audio track, over fifty-two minutes. That, in itself, is not a problem—the last album I reviewed had a similar lack of indexes, but it was still a great disc. The music on this disc is mostly samples, apparently taken from an album called Exposition by Stylus (not affiliated with this interwebzine). The samples are just randomly slapped together into a big long klutzy collage. The sounds come back again and again throughout the piece, most notably a French-sounding lady saying “Zero. Zero? Ze – ro. Zero! Zero.” Other sounds include bubbly water, analog synth nonsense, arrhythmic loops, bleeps, gristly crackling sounds. All appear without any aesthetic sense at all, and often have big reverbs and delays rubbed on them to sound all trippy and shit.
High-concept art? Pretentious computer-snootiness? I have no idea. Annoying group of samples slapped into a big chunk of beatless garbage? Yes. Zero? Definitely zero. This is neither experimental nor research, and it’s only barely audio.
I can’t sit and listen to this album. It makes me shout aloud, “Come on, people!! We’ve already had Oval, Mille Plateaux, Pole, Akufen, and a whole lotta other people who did something interesting with their samplers. They processed their sounds in an interesting way. They arranged the sounds into interesting songs and tone poems. Stop making music that sounds this horribly dated and uncreative!! And if you do make this kind of music, don’t press it onto CD!!!”
I have a bad feeling that whoever made this album was just hanging out in his studio, smoking bizzo, being another annoying hippie stereotype and fooling around with his toys. And I have nothing against that, per se. I suppose, if he was Lennon, he could’ve come up with something great, but he didn’t.
I don’t like being a hater. I really don’t. But this is what’s wrong with electronic music today.
Reviewed by: Francis Henville Reviewed on: 2004-02-06 Comments (4) |