Or Some Computer Music

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Or Some Computer Music: Issue 1 introduces a new periodical series from the Or label, one of several mysterious enterprises operating from London's 13 Oswald Road. Essentially an update/expansion of Wergo's long-lived "Computer Music Currents" series, Or Some (say it fast; giggle; repeat) supplements its 73+-minutes of exclusive computer music contributions with a 24-page booklet designed in the scrappiest monochrome monitor-output style that modern desktop technology can buy. Paging through the text uncovers the occasional biographical or program note of value, but the documentation aspect of Or Some is either underdeveloped or, as in the case of Stephen Travis Pope's exhaustive entry, rather indulgent. It's not a fatal flaw, however, as the music culls from an intriguing cross-section of computer-music artists new and old and is often quite "orsome" indeed. Blink and you'll miss the opening bit of scrambled-byte GIGO by cd_slopper (Florian Hecker and Farmers Manual's Oswald Berthold). Mego associates General Magic and Irdial noisenik Beautyon later expound upon such data-crunching, laptop-jockeying concrète chaos to more satisfying effect. Sub-academic cult figure Trevor Wishart provides the disc's highlight with his 24-minute "Fabulous Paris," an idealized meta-megalopolis constructed from recordings of city sounds, television samples, and voices of historic import. This favorite concrète conceit (see also Jon Appleton's "Times Square Times Ten" or Pierre Henry's La Ville, Die Stadt) sounds fresh when realized with Wishart's customary humor and gently Surrealist flair. Aphex Twin's name will shift more units than Wishart's, though the peculiar syn-bongo filterings and DSP monkeyshines of "Perc #6" seem to catch Richard D. James basking somewhat lazily in Autechre's reflected light. Pope's contribution is a '98 revision of "Kombination XI Parts 1-6," his 1978 concrète-style realization of a Helmut Heissenbüttel poem. Though well interpreted and suitably ponderous, the piece feels like the sort of quaint, fussy academic exercise better suited to the Wergo series - especially when compared with the frayed tensile chatter and digital diffusion of Kevin Drumm's ultra-current "Feelin Hilarious" and Ubik's gushing torrent of sampled and profusely manipulated guitar. Zbigniew Karkowski and Kasper T. Toeplitz also circumvent any traces of empirical stodginess with their powerful, sustained sonic evocation of (super?)natural forces. If the quality established by Volume 1 remains a constant, and the compilers cast their nets wider to feature a more diverse selection of contributors (female and non-Western artists are particularly underrepresented here), these Or reports could serve as an indispensable digest of computer-music happenings within and without the halls of academia.