Experimental Electronic Music
Material from the following interview with Don Slepian was used in Justin Patrick Moore’s new book The Radio Phonics Laboratory: Telecommunications, Speech Synthesis, and the Birth of Electronic Music from Velocity Press and available on Bookshop.org, Amazon, and fine bookstores everywhere.
These are works of musique concrète recalling the radiophonic atmospheres in vogue in the fifties and sixties and now seeing a sound resurgence as the medium of tape is revitalized and resurrected for composing.
Justin Patrick Moore’s Negativland with Sue-C show review and Stand By for Failure Documentary double feature.
In a way this album can be thought of as a collective mirror reflecting the sound prerogatives and choices of People Like Us and the many guest musicians involved as they wander through the library. From this fact people often infer that the library is infinite, because it sounds like they have used an infinite number of pieces to create this kaleidoscopic collection of musical associations.
These murals could just as easily be on the outside of a large city block, or sequestered inside of a dimly lit jazz café where modal post-bop has mutated into tranquil harmonic abstractions that hover like smoke above the tables of a transfixed clientele.
Introspective moods are cultivated here with pastoral synth washes and mesmeric floating chords. Yet the wisps of sadness in these short pieces do not linger for too long, as winter has given way to spring rains and new shoots of life emerge out of the soil. Even if that soil has been damaged.
The back room of DSGN CLLCTV hosted an evening of electronic, noise, and left field music. Some of those on the bill were old friends and familiar faces from Cincinnati’s stalwart scene of experimentalists, while two of the other acts stopped by on their respective tours, to make for a memorable night.
Perhaps what is most astonishing about the flux of noise, beauty, sound, art, collected here is the number of recent recordings from 2018 and 2021. That makes this particular double-album of various artists unique. The other recordings that aren’t new, are rare, or at least difficult to get a hold of. Having them all in one place is a real treat.
