Three Compositions For Machines

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Grrrrrrrrr, Brrrrrrr, Drrrrrrrrrr... As I write, the motion team - and its parent company state51 - are preparing to move into a disused factory. My colleague Dan Hill has suggested that we play this CD on a loop in the site to remind the neighbours of its former use, or perhaps to reawaken the ghosts of its former Victorian machine operators. Thanks, Dan. Three Compositions was recorded at the 1997 "Masterclass" event organised by Dutch avant garde and electronica label Staalplaat. The event was a cross-disciplinary one, inviting musicians to do work outside their usual fields. For a part of the event, a series of noise-making machines - the "rustler", the "crescent" and the siren - were built by one C Schläge. Three musicians from very different backgrounds were then asked to compose a piece for each of the machines during the course of the event, which would be performed at its close. Mika Vaino of Finnish techno-brutalists Panasonic, ever wayward, instead performed a piece on several machines. It is, rather inevitably, the harshest piece on the record, a series of white noise drones whirring on ceaselessly (this was the piece which prompted Hill to make his "factory" comments). Exhausting, but clever. Pita is the indefatigable Peter Rehberg of Vienna's Mego improv-electronica collective. His piece is performed on the crescent, which sounds like dozens of bicycle bells and alarm clocks going off all over the place. Great fun. Meanwhile Charlemange Palestine, overlooked Minimalist godfather or overrated noise-monger, depending on your tastes, dispenses with his piano and teddy bears to play the siren; emphasising the overtones produced by various overlapping notes, he has, strangely, created a piece which sounds not unlike Ligeti. My favourite piece here, however, wasn't performed at the festival, but a month later. It is a duet improvisation for, er, typewriter, performed by Vaino and Rehberg. It's compelling, building to a rhythmic climax that's the whole album's choicest moment. An intriguing document of a fascinating event.