Like Matmos, Autechre and µ-Ziq , Otto von Schirach makes experimental techno/neo-techno music for musical intellectuals. Avant-garde in its push, 8000 B.C. is a phenomenon that will leave more listeners awestruck than happy. Von Schirach also cites Biohazard as an influence, strangely enough, which means that you may hear hints of thrash and hardcore, and heavy, hip-hop-influenced beats. These highly varied and sharp flavours combine to make 8000 B.C. an unusual and somewhat unhinged album.
In case that seems less than complimentary, please keep in mind that 8000 B.C. is a little gem of sonic technology. Using keyboards and some odder instruments, including accordions, a Jew's harp, a Geiger counter, "seismological instruments [and] various toys", von Schirach makes an amalgamation of burbles, bleeps, screeches and burps; the listener can just barely separate them from each other in order to identify them. The sound is never melodic. It becomes a kind of a game just to try to figure out what it is you're listening to, and to classify the bits of it. In other words, more than offering musical pleasure, 8000 B.C. appeals to my (and possibly your) urge to label, sort, investigate and classify. At times the music sounds like a busy video arcade set up in the median strip of a major highway at rush hour...underwater. Describing the sound, however, almost seems pointless. There are few words in the mix, and the occasional vocalizations are so cut up that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to decide what they are; if you can figure out the lyrics to 8000 B.C., you should collect that $1000 for the lyrics to "Louie Louie" while you're at it.
Ultimately, what a listener takes away from this CD has to be pure emotion, and for a lot of people that emotion might well swing between rage and boredom. For game players, magister ludi, avant-garde musicians, people who deconstruct deSaussure for fun and lovers of electronic technology, 8000 B.C. would have to be amazing. For the rest of us... well, the range of the album's appeal will depend on your personal quirkiness quotient. This music is harsh, and isn't looking to make friends. It is what it is. Pick it up if you relish the odd... If worst comes to worst, you can always play it on your answering machine, and make your crazy Aunt Sarah sure that you've been captured by aliens at last. My sister may have summed it up best when she announced, "I dub this spacey alien trip-hop mix."
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