COPY FOR YOUR RECORDS

these tracks are being played back through a patch in a random order. the patch also arbitrarily chooses a value for the silence between the tracks (the silence values were devised through an esoteric formula reed came up with that had something to do with up-sampling from 11khz to 24khz). i made this patch so that i wouldn't privilege any of the tracks over the course of time. from my perspective, it's a non-hierarchical arrangement of the lattice motifs; for everyone else it will be a piece of music composed by indeterminate means. perspective matters.

all of the sound material is from pd generated white noise and lattice filter.

thanks reed for the labor, encouragement, and nourishment.

On this rough cassette of process music, Eric Laska chases one process after another, as if trying to exterminate the vermin in his building through use of giant alligators. Starting point appears to have been electronic source material generated by most random means possible and being almost totally neutral (white noise) in nature, though I am intrigued by the potential of a “lattice filter” whatever that may be. If I could affix such a screen to the front of my Play-Doh Fun Factory, I expect the coloured glop would emerge strained in semi-woven string patterns, as surely as a fat man walking through a wire mesh fence. Ruez’s inert source material is then fed through a system-based process which I think is also capable of generating silence at random points in the playback. Sharpoid stuff when it catches fire in its bad-tempered android way, and even when those silent gaps can be a bit lengthy and aggravating, the music we do hear has a steely core of aloofness that appears supremely indifferent to our approbation. Laska may or may not aspire to some enhanced form of Cagean composition with this compacted statement.

- Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector

Ruez – is Eric Laska and the piece here focuses on indeterminacy of manipulations of micro electronics and silences, ‘abstract electronics’. For my part I think a simplistic aesthetic would be inappropriate here and thus my criticism is that we do have insufficient supporting material. I’m not sure why cassette tape was used against CD or CDR as given the piece is it seems originated by the use of digital means? Which is how it could be dismissed, for I think this kind of work benefits or would benefit from more conceptual support- not an explaining away, but often I’m faced with having to put people right who dismiss work that isn’t just an aesthetics, not that there is anything wrong with that. But I can think of one very notable occasion of having to explain to a Bach scholar of some renown that so called ‘modern music’ has more to it than its sonical presence. And the discussion then was productive, for even – no – especially ‘classical’ music can and should be both listened to and understood. This ‘study’ doesn’t in anyway diminish the music, far from it, even a basic examination and analysis of ‘classical’ scores reveals the subtleness and inner workings of works of great precision. And this work – above – is not so different? Electronica lacks such scores yet without them or an alternative- they are left in a world of “Noise” (sic) where these works might be easily passed by. Which would be a pity as one suspects that below or above the ‘sound’ is more ‘going on’. So these would lend themselves to a greater exegesis than the cassette format, I’m thinking of the CD/Book releases sometime ago from unknown public.

- Jliat, Vital Wekly