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03/24/2005: "raster-noton: the sound of breakfast crunching."
That new Alva Noto thing, 'Transspray', on Raster-Noton: I'm kind of into it! So stiff it's funky!
According to the Raster-Noton website (which is insanely sparse and austere in a kind of beautiful way, check it out here: it's the product of "text, image, vector graphic-storage files, [which] were translated into raw audio data as the source material from which constellations of diffused sound start to form. Special emphasis is put on the rhythmic aspect of the digitalised and rasterised data. The tools of their transformation reveal themselves by the structure of the recordings."
Have you ever tried playing Photoshop files through iTunes? I have, in my botched attempts to start a noise-rock band with my laptop once. I guess it depends on the files you choose to translate into a smoldering wreckage of audio data, but it actually creates a pretty full palette of sonics--harsh noise, sure, but it doesn't sound piercing and shrill; it sounds thick and sticky, like peanut butter (the crunchy, 'natural' kind) is seeping out of your computer. The sound is intensely varied, full of bright melodic blips and chopped-up psychedelic weirdness. Photoshop blood and guts, oozing everywhere! Eew, gross! Get it off me!
But this isn't that. You get the harsh, crashing digital noise, but the sound is very clean and lean and monochromatic. The end sonic result, after all that avant-garde data-munching and number crunching: something that sounds like...wait for it...German technoid party-rockers Alter Ego! I'm psyched.
(If you happen to be in Berlin, you can check this guy out along with Zeitkratzer (the crazy crew that arranged and covered the entirety of Metal Machine Music as an orchestra) at the Volksbuehne on Friday.)
