Intermedium From One2Two

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German label Intermedium Records grew out of the 1999 intermedium 1 festival, which showcased artistic work, such as radio plays, musical theatre and interactive online experiments, created from multiple types of media. This two-disc label sampler culls material that the label released after intermedium 1 and before the second media event, intermedium 2, which was held from 22 March to 28 March, 2002.

The material on 'Intermedium From One2Two' generally falls into one of two categories. The first is that of the radio play, which is a form of broadcast art that combines spoken word pieces with music. For instance, actor Barry McGovern reads parts of the stone-sucking sequence from Samuel Beckett's 'Molloy', in which the protagonist is inventing a method to suck 16 pebbles without wetting one more than once or overlooking one. The music backing these narrations is aurally pointillistic. A horn plays for a few seconds, carrying out a drone, until it is snuffed into silence. Slivers of brass jut in, showing themselves off like a stark dot of paint on a blank canvas, but they are quickly whited out. Other radio plays include an excerpt from 'Das Warheads-Oratorium', a radio play based on the psychological mindset of war, and an excerpt from 'Shonen A', which was derived from the written documentation of a 1997 murder case in Japan.

The second category of material on this sampler is concept-based music: music created for a specific purpose, such as for the intermedium media art festivals, or via a special process. The latter is represented by Kid 606's 'speak/tear paper' piece, which originally appeared on the 'One Word One Sound' CD. The idea underlying the track is to formulate a piece of music around two sound samples - a person speaking a single word ("Speak!") and the sound of an action occurring to a piece of paper (tearing). Given the potential sonic bedlam in the sound of tearing, Kid 606's piece is restrained - a serene stream of keyboard color gives way to a refreshing twist of glitchy dub.

Although many of the artists on 'One2Two' are German, such as Andreas Ammer and Console, the sampler does have a cross-section of international names, including DJ Spooky, Philip Jeck, and Sparks. The radio plays echo this global view, including broadcasts in German, English, and Japanese. This diversity should not put off monolingual listeners, however. While they may not understand all of the literary drama presented in some of these pieces, they will still be immersed in a release that shuns the predictable and embraces a concept of experimental music that actually takes risks.