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August 18th, 2006 by Jonathan Fletcher (Permalink)
Label: Finders Keepers Year: 2006 Add Comments |
The upsurge of interest in library music over the last decade or so has thrown plenty of obscure delights at an unsuspecting public but this latest disc from Finders Keepers is a truly superb compilation of found-behind-the-back-of-the-sofa electronic avant-fromage by one Bruno Spoerri, electronics wizard and former Can collaborator (well, Irmin Schmidt at least).
The music within comprises pieces for exhibitions, TV shows and documentaries as well as industrial and business commissions and ranges from the playful and groovy to more experimental pieces (well, I think you could argue that they’re ALL experimental really) that easily match the space-bound journeys of tape and musique concrete pioneers like Stockhausen. Which is hardly light praise anyway but when you hear electronic fragments of Saturn’s rings welded to factory noises and space rock that Funkadelic would be proud of, you know you are in for one kick ass, mind-melting ride. And, it couldn’t be easier on the ears.
Les Electroniciens for example is a PR disc for the Lansing-Bagnall company (what? Oh, fork lift trucks- keep up at the back please) and is a gargantuan psychedelic slab of funk concrete- fast looping bass, funky drummer, spiralling solo, modular tones and naturally, the aforementioned truck in full operation. Clearly, this in itself was not sufficient for the restless Spoerri so halfway through the unsuspecting listener is dropped onto the Barron’s Forbidden Planet with lonely analogue howl and synth bubble before shooting back into the groove(y) for the coda. God only knows what work must have been like the day this got spun. Or, take Oederlin (The Iron Foundry) which again begins with environmental sounds from the foundry and sharp buried meandering synth warbles before morphing into a kind of analogue cyber hoedown. Other moments though, like Lilith- Singing in the Dark are poignant and adrift, a lost horizon of multi-tracked wordless vocals.
What has emerged from the wealth of music tracked down by dedicated vinyl hunters, what emerges through labels like Finders Keepers and Trunk and bands like Broadcast and the sublime Ghost Box roster (to name but a few) is that the hinterland where un-self consciously innovative musical thinking meets the requirements of commercial composition throw up more radical and evocative music than the drab ‘society-changing’ urges of a lot of rock music from the same period. As the lost becomes found, we can start rewriting a much more colourful history of contemporary music.
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