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artist · various artists
release · inflation
year · 2002
genre · electronic
label · mu-label
catalogue · mu-label 003+004
website · www.mu-label.com
date · 12-apr-2004
quality · 243kbps/44,1khz
source · compact disc
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cd 1:
01 merzbow - 0.000 remix 7:41
02 taylor deupree - /./// 6:31
03 kozo inada - -[0] 4:46
04 zbigniew karkowski - s.r.i.-top secret 4:09
05 kim cascone - foldover dust (from a catalog of residues) 2:34
06 koji asano - remix iii 5:57
07 dale lloyd - irony in the audible. 1:19
08 hsi-chuang cheng - zero is a human concept 6:56
09 /0 - inflation 1:25
10 aube - come to something 9:59
cd 2:
01 richard chartier - 000.0/01 8:58
02 marc behrens - >0 7:02
03 akira rabelais - sabishisa no soko nukete furu mizore 6:02
kana...
04 john hudak - 5 reduced by 9 4:35
05 bernhard gunter - 00.09.57.046 [for richard chartier] 9:59
06 steve roden - eleven zeros 6:29
07 stephan mathiew - floccipaucinihilipilification 5:08
08 duul_drv - n_stl.wav(0.000 analogue) 5:57
09 *0 - lim-0 0:06
10 immedia - 0.000r 5:00
playtime · 01h 50m 33s
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a year or so ago, japanese minimalist artist *0 (nosei sakata)
released a disk on his own mu-label entitled 0.000. this release
consists of two test tracks of 1,000 hz sine waves and fifteen
tracks of sine waves either below 20 hz or above 2,000 hzùthat is,
either below or above the audible threshold of human ears. in
short, apart from the test tracks, the disk is silent. sure, your
dog can hear the songs, but you, the paying customer, cannot. what
is the point of this disk? some critics suggest (and i would
agree) that the work simply takes minimalist electronic music to
its inevitable conclusion: music so minimal that it cannot be
heard. in fact, the liner notes to the release proudly proclaim
this very point when they announce, "you cannot hear anything."
ah, but proclaiming "you cannot hear anything" is not the same as
saying that there is nothing to hear. to prove this, we have
inflation, a mu-label concept album where some of the most
prominent artists on the minimal side of electronic music (taylor
deupree, bernhard gⁿnter, merzbow, richard chartier, aube) take
the silent tracks on 0.000 and create "everything" out of
"nothing." this is, in short, a remix album where the source
material is inaudible and the artists must use these inaudible
sounds to create audible music.
this is, without a doubt, the ultimate in concept albums, a work
whose primary existence is to prove that computer software has
reached the point where any sound (even inaudible sounds) can be
used as the basis for any kind of musical experiment your mind can
concoct. of course, just because you can create music out of
nothing doesnÆt mean you should. lucky for us, however, the
artists represented on inflation have taken this experiment
seriously, and the results here are, by and large, excellent. what
is most impressive about the work is how many ways these artists
have found to transform both the silence of *0's work and the
simple sine waves of each track, creating musically inventive,
musically rewarding works that you not only can hear but want to.
the individual tracks span the gamut of minimal electronic music,
from silence to noise, from rhythm to atmospherics, from zbigniew
karkowski's noise-orgy "s.r.i.-top secret" to bernhard gⁿnter's
only marginally audible "00.09.57.046 (for richard chartier),"
from the digital randomization of /0's "inflation" to the digital
rhythms of taylor deupree's "/.///." despite this variety, there
is a common thread that weaves its way through these individual
tracks: each track seeks to create something out of very little.
hence, even the noisy tracks are noisy in very sparse (or simple)
ways. as a result, some of the noisier tracks are not really that
interesting. it is on the more atmospheric tracks where this
release comes alive. perhaps the best example of this is richard
chartier's "000.0/01." chartier's music is closest aesthetically
to the music on the original 0.000; he generally creates epics of
sweeping inaudibility, where the sounds are so faint and so
difficult to decipher above the hums of stereos or computers that
the act of listening to his music is often a difficult chore.
chartier's work on inflation follows this pattern there are
stretches of silence, stretches of almost inaudible hums,
stretches of silence intermittently interrupted with clicks or
bleeps, and stretches of hums interrupted with silence, clicks,
bleeps, and even more silence. but the work as a whole is a
perfect summation of the very ideas proposed by minimal art:
taking the bare minimum of sounds and reworking them to create
something interesting, challenging, and rewarding. listening to
chartier's work is like listening to your own mind process the
sounds of everyday life. we don't normally listen to the world
around us because we're so used to it. chartier's hums and blips
and silences, however, call attention to that sound, and force us
to perceive that sound in a new, more interesting context.
"000.0/01" might be the best thing chartier has ever created.
if i can cull any sort of pattern onto this two-cd compilation, i
would say that the first diskùfeaturing merzbow, deupree, kim
cascone, and aubeùis louder and more focused on rhythm, and the
second disk featuring chartier, gⁿnter, steve roden, and a six
second track of silence from *0 himself is softer and more focused
on atmospherics. i prefer the second disk, if only because i like
atmospherics more than noise, but both disks are filled with
excellent, intelligent, and rewarding music.
reviewed by: michael heumann
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