end id

various artists

digital narcis

1999 CDx2

play | buy

reviews

“... material ranging from minimalist through field recordings to noisescapes.”— Remote Induction

“... gathers the electronic underground for this double disc look at the development of sound and technology in the 20th century”—Music News Network

“A good package, nice concept and a lot of music for a reasonable price. I'm impressed with the selections from the artists...”—Brainwashed

Remote Induction

End ID is a 2 CD compilation from the Japanese Digital Narcis label which is intended to reflect the technological innovations of the last century, particularly in reference to their bearing on sound art. To reflect this the 2 CDs gather a number of sound artists from around the world and they present their contributions - material ranging from minimalist through field recordings to noisescapes. The artists assembled include the likes of Andrew Lagowski, Eric La Casa, Koji Marutani, Ryoji Ikeda, Zbigniew Karkowski, Aube, Thomas Dimuzio, Atau Tanaka and Kasper T. Toeplotz. the material I suspect is more about art and documentation of experiments rather than entertainment - with which it isn't really a release where I sit and think about which tracks sound good, its more a case of finding interesting elements, effects and techniques. Some of the tracks have notes which give a particular insight to what is going on - a particular example of that is the piece by Tanaka which makes comment on was and how it is dealt with by modern media, which is reflected by him taking a particularly significant picture and using it with a couple of programmes to create the sound of the piece. Of the material by artists I know well enough to comment on the Aube is strong and the Ikeda piece is surprising with its combination of his typical pulses and cut up dialogue, something which is particularly effective. —PTR

Music News Network

Japan's Koji Marutani (who has appeared on several Touch compilations) gathers the electronic underground for this double disc look at the development of sound and technology in the 20th century. It is not only another chance to promote the scene working with digital noise, Mego's Rehberg & Bauer for instance, but also to equate experimenters coming from power electronics with those of academic backgrounds like Maggi Payne.

The CD's concept requires the use of a range of sound sources, and an emphasis was placed on communications technologies: dictaphone (ERG), records (Michael Gendreau & Ralf Wehousky), radio (Ryoji Ikeda, Koji Marutani), television (Aube) and the domestic answering machine (Venoz TKS). Maggi Payne worked with raw short-wave radio broadcasts in which she found a compressed history of telecommunications - signals from a basic Morse code to current forms are all present simultaneously.

The more unusual sound sources on End ID include Mark Behrens' use of a "light-to-sound transducer" for his electronic-concrete piece "Ccdeinnoorsttu," and Zbigniev Karkowski & Helmut Schafer's sampling of the hums and drones of a German power plant for "Don't Touch Me I'm Electric." And the strangest of them all is Atau Tanaka's computer translation of Nick Ut's Pulitzer famous prize-winning photograph of the Vietnamese victim of an American napalm attack. His programs interpreted a spectral scan of the photograph, with the vertical axis becoming frequency in the remarkable piece "9m14s Over Vietnam."

Brainwashed

It is both the end of the decade and the end of the century, so record companies are trying to honor this century with as many collections as they can. I'm not quite sure how this music directly relates to music and/or media in the 20th century but it is a fine collection of some of the most innovative current electronic music artists. This is a two-cd set which features 20 tracks from Japanese artists like Aube, Ryoji Ikeda, Koji Marutani and Toru Yamanaka; American composers and professors like Andrew Lagowski, Maggi Payne and Thomas Dimuzio plus others from around the world. The highlights include 'Ouroboros 7,' a field recording from French artist Eric La Casa, 'Ccdeinnoorsttu' (dedicated to the Coca Cola Company) by M.Behrens, and '9m14s Over Vietnam' by Atau Tanaka. Along with the 2 discs in a visually appealing package is a little booklet with brief media/invention/event 'highlights' of the 20th Century. A good package, nice concept and a lot of music for a reasonable price. I'm impressed with the selections from the artists, as they're all well done tracks rather than the typical throw-aways for the comps. — Jon Whitney