Consider this in the running for the "minimalist/maximalist" release of the year. While releasing an album on a USB flash drive is not a new thing, few of the ones thus far have had the same quality of presentation. Packaged in a small bamboo box, just slightly bigger than a matchbox, is an engraved bamboo drive which contains a total of ten unreleased albums, recorded between 1999 and 2008. Ten hours of music in a small box, which costs barely more than a single CD. However, with that much material, there is going to be a bit of overload.
I don’t think I’m the only Brainwashed contributor that is not a big fan of the digital-only direction music is taking. While I have an iPod and use it while driving/working, nothing is the same as putting a CD in the player, or throwing on a nice heavy piece of vinyl, and turning up the stereo system. In this case, at least the presentation is nice, and the sound quality isn’t bad for a series of 224k MP3s. Modern home entertainment technology has at least moved forward enough that I can plug this in and listen to it on hardware other than just on my computer. In this case also, I doubt this amount of material could have been released in a cost effective and artistic way.
Now, preface aside, on this one gig flash drive is a set of ten MP3s, one for each album and a small photo gallery, all organized by a simple, yet effective, html interface. For better or worse, the albums presented here could have all been recorded around the same time, as the style doesn’t differ greatly from piece to piece, but the approach and dynamics do.
Some of the albums stay restrained and soft: Cretion is a study in textures, with various clicks and buzzes staying extremely quiet, with the occasional processed thump of a microphone and a small amount of electronic interference. Of all of the albums here, this is the one that is more easily labeled as "laptop" sounding, being based mostly on a microsound type concept. The following Section is similar, though allowing in obscured conversations, the occasional melodic tonal section, and occasional outbursts of percussion and tiny guitar sounds.
There is also a notable set of "medium" sounding albums, the opening album Torsion uses ragged lo-fi guitar and minimal walls of electronic sound that are thick and syrupy, but not harsh or aggressive, occasionally pulling away to allow chiming melodies and pieces of feedback to come forth. Both Tance and Position have similar dynamics, the former uses ethnic environmental sounds and oddly warbling and phased tones while the latter has some crunchy, overdriven fuzz and lost radio transmissions that come to the forefront. Both also have a focus on beeps and bleeps that could be a conversation between robots, Position especially having a notable psychedelic, spacey bent to it.
Of course, a few of the albums also stray more into the raw and more harsh sounds too. Partition opens with what sounds like heralding horns that lead to a pass of quiet reflection, but the second half of the album drenches the ambient tones in heavy reverb, occasional percussive elements, and rawer, static sounds make it a bit more of a standout album. Topie’s opening of amp noise and heavy bass rumbles sets the stage for what will be the harshest album here: the rumbles swell to grinding and clipping levels that aren’t too far removed from what would be heard on the Cold Meat Industries label during the heyday of power electronics/death industrial, though the twittering, chirpy electronic sounds keep it from being too bleak or black. Even the blasting organ tones might keep this album away from the stereotypical "noise" imagery, though the approach isn’t all that different.
It is definitely tough to cover this, because there’s simply so much material to try and digest. Ten hours of abstract electronics, found sounds, and random improvisation is a lot to sit through at once. At times, the barriers between the albums become obscured and the sound all blends together. But, given the cost to content ratio here, picking an album to listen to here and there rather than going on an electro-acoustic bender is the best way to tackle this.
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