I have noticed some interest in New Electronica on the IDM, and particularily
on Scanner. Following is a posting I was send, it is from a UK writer named
Desmond Hill. He is probably one of the best of the UK press, his opinions
are often more developed than his ability to slag, as most UK writers seem
hell bent on (I apologize for not asking about reprinting this, I thought its
educational value meritted widespread emination!). Other New Electronica
releases are also highly recommended, the Objet's D'Art compilation, although
very difficult to catch, is superb, 110 Below #2 is much more trip hoppy and
even a bit hip hoppy than #1, but still a cool acquisition. Other titles too
numerous to mention, look out for them.
From: "Desmond K. Hill" <des@anubis23.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 20:44:33 +0000
Subject: *scanner*
in response to jorge l fernandez's request, there are several sides to
scanner. for those also intrigued, enclosed below a reflection. hope you
find it useful. ciao, *des*
Telephoneopathy:
Edinburgh, Sunday at midnight, 'The Blue Room' beneath Carlton
Street begins to fill. The outlaws, eccentrics and anarchists of the inner
cities parade their renegade panache of mutant pigtails, denim skirts,
crazy coloured hair, old skool tracksuits, woollen hats, gleaming piercings
and urban camouflage. Drawn like snakes to a charmer's pipe, a dishevelled
daydream forms in the wake of a river of sound. The datastream controller
is 'texture mixing', which means more than playing several items at once.
Two CD players, two turntables, a DAT machine, live voices, layer upon
layer. On the decks, Scanner is spinning and cutting up inherited
preconditioned responses.
Improvisation is all about connections and juxtapositions. It's
literally a new way to make music, a continuously spreading web of texture
and aural confusion, rich and impoverished like nothing else yet. It
scrambles the entire club-going experience, shifting the action away from a
performance or an event and toward nothing less than an absurd abstraction.
The club is a vibe, a mind-set, a place people go to get right. Collaged
sound is a 'border art' crossing geographical and psychic boundaries. This
intimate fusion of timely and timeless, means a return to communication, to
interaction, to people. It's a way of playing that's like chasing sunbeams.
It's between compromising and improvising, between tying things down and
letting things happen, between making mistakes and getting things right.
It's functional and it's online, now. Facilitating sounds from distant
locations, with huge variations of scale, it becomes organic, alive. The
mix trawls archives and airwaves to reconnect sound-shards and layer them
into a shifting sea of living language, sound and noise interference. Aural
recollection. Living history. Collaged memory.
The Scanner series of releases (on Ash International), amounting to
three CDs so far feature a fifteen year old catalogue of scanned
(intercepted) mobile phone dialogues by unsuspecting Cellnet users.
Irresistibly voyeuristic, these conversational fragments are laid onto a
bare foundation of minimal musical aurascapes, supplemented with common
place and largely ignored sounds such as closing doors, transistors
switching between stations, or television background noises. This music is
the accompanying score to a living film. Voices from the darkness are
extracted from the monologue of the city itself. The ensuing collage is
highly evocative and highly provocative, but do these recordings reflect
street life or just escapist voyeurist fantasies? Procurer of sonic debris,
Robin Rimbaud, is very much aware of what he is dealing with: "I cannot
deny there's a voyeuristic element involved. In a way the material all
plays to that, but also points to more serious issues of personal
communication."
Scanner's sci-fi perception of urban dystopia is not necessarily
incoherent. Every time you use a cheque book to purchase groceries at
Safeway, the details are passed to a market research company. Every time
you make a phone call Telecom are able to instantly trace the details.
Every time you withdraw money from a cash machine, the transactions are
recorded. Our every move is monitored by closed circuit cameras. The
revolution might not be televised, but it will be prerecorded. One nation
under surveillance.
Questioned about the criminal adoption of hi-tech (scanners can be
used to tap Police radio signals) Robin is a little bemused: "I like to
think my implementation is more creative. Making tracks which form around
the noise of a tiny transistor radio playing beneath a telephone
conversation. Taking tiny fragments, bringing them from the hidden
background, into the foreground." This kind of sneaky listening-in is
controversial to put it mildly. Scanner technology is barely detectable, so
the chance of apprehension is slim. Yet, replies the protagonist, there is
no difference between video diaries, field recordings, crossed telephone
lines, fax interceptions, misdialled conversations. All exist in an
indiscriminate ocean of digital signals flying overhead, barely within our
grasp. By siphoning the tiny currents of the datastream, and redirecting
the info-flow, he is attacking control structures and authorial power.
Sampling is more than cultural archaeology, it's an accelerated collision
between past and present into a future yet to begin. Those who control the
editing rooms run the show. This is paradigm-hacking on the streets,
cutting and pasting, manipulating information to structure an alternative
audio reality.
His armoury is minimal but impressive: a mobile scanner handset, an
Alesis Quadraverb Plus effects unit, a Digitech 7.5 Second Echo Unit,
Yamaha keyboards, a four track recorder to mix, a portable DAT machine and
a recording Walkman, used in countless environmental or field recordings
collected over the last fifteen years. "It's all rather lo-tech," he
modestly remarks, "but pushed to its extremes it can become quite
interesting." In one sense the medium has itself become the instrument. A
logical step for a community that spends increasing amounts of life
interfacing not with other creatures but with technology. It is the
man-machine interface that has provoked this vision of confused
communication, the infinite mix with its seamless sonic structures.
Scanner literally transmutes into function, becoming a filter,
compressing the most relevant, pertinent or obscure data. Does this not
make him a shadow thief, a voracious listener to the tawdry dealings in the
margin? No says Robin, "Mobile phones are already a common intrusion. You
see people shouting into them on trains, in restaurants, walking down the
street. They are everywhere." Instead of the passive reception of consumer,
he has invested creativity with retransmission of sonic material, into a
comment about human relationships.
To address these questions, widen the musicological debate, and bring
together others of like mind, Robin cultivated the 'Electronic
Lounge', a techno fest of new sound innovation, with unique projects and
live performances in the artsy enclave of London's ICA bar. Events occur on
the first Tuesday of every month, all at low volume so you can gently
unwind and meet with friends. "It's working very well actually," he admits.
The practicalities of exchanged ideas are ideal in a format which is more
than a place to connect and more than a club. "We want to introduce even
more ideas so by liaising with a variety of all kinds of folks, not only
musicians, we can do that," he enthuses, "More than anything the fruits
will blossom in six months time when the various projects that people are
discussing now are actually released."
Desmond K. Hill
written September 1994, published November 1994
des@anubis23.demon.co.uk