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...according to our Brian on Thu 24 Mar, 2011.
I'm quite fond of the Raster-Noton sound. These days that often stands more for sparse, metronomic techno with very minimal melodic phrases and a distinctive clinical sheen which, whilst not exactly forming floor destroying tunes as such, certainly offers up some delectable forms of hypnotic rhythym. This CD does not contain music to play in a club unless you want to drive your audience insane. Instead, you get smart beats overlaid with his (yes Anne-James is a guy) own snappily edited and multi-layered voice samples which provide the majority of the 'music' here. It stylistically makes me think along the lines of Herbert, Soft Pink Truth/Matmos & sonic sculptors/Global agitators Ultra-Red. Not to mention labelmate Alvin Noto (sic). I like the fact this album is some kind of tribute to what this chap considers 'poor literature', IE all the printed ephemera you accumulate from daily living - receipts, tickets, tabloid newspapers. He waits until something interesting world media-wise happens then uses his big French voice to dictate & record the text which is then mashed, spliced, edited & splurged into numerous fascinating audio collages ("sound poetry" if you will) with only steady rolling kick drum loops for support. Sounds potentially terrible but believe me, this is one of the most compulsive releases i've heard on the label, the way it's all expertly processed & constructed makes me smile!
«poor literature», that’s how french sound poet anne-james chaton calls trivial worka- day texts like receipts, metro tickets, newspaper headlines and so on. he collects these kind of texts for years now, always on certain «événements» – media-related occasions which are of particular interest. chaton converts them into music. on raster-noton, he releases his événements n° 20 to 28, which deal with, among others, the investiture of barack obama or michael jackson’s death. the fragments of literature and their musical arrangement remind, due to their preci- sion, of the performance of a human beat boxer. chaton cuts, loops and samples the spoken texts and assembles them into staccato-like and hypnotising tracks. the text itself is treated like an instrument; its repetition, its inner rhythmic condense the song and push it. apparently random chosen phrases are isolated and their original message is transformed, their former simple meaning is extended.
01 événement n° 20 jeudi 22 janvier 2009 04 : 37 02 événement n° 21 jeudi 19 mars 2009 01 : 37 03 événement n° 22 vendredi 12 juin 2009 03 : 51 04 événement n° 23 vendredi 26 juin 2009 04 : 08 05 événement n° 24 mardi 30 juin 2009 03 : 17 06 événement n° 25 mercredi 1 juillet 2009 04 : 24 07 événement n° 26 mardi 28 juillet 2009 03 : 54 08 événement n° 27 vendredi 21 aout 2009 04 : 52 09 événement n° 28 jeudi 24 septembre 2009 03 : 17 10 barack obama 00 : 15 11 sème le trouble 00 : 14 12 le printemps de téhéran 00 : 14 13 pop is dead 00 : 15 14 de l’empire 00 : 15 15 pina bausch 00 : 16 16 avoir peur 00 : 15 17 taliban 00 : 16 18 sommet de pittsburgh 00 : 16
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