It only makes ironic sense now that in the years that once represented the ideal of “The Future,” a small group of electronic musicians has retaken its crown of deconstruction, experimentalism, and orchestrated confusion back to its purest form. Projects like Oval, Nobukazu Takemura, Dead CEO artists and those representing at Chicago’s Transmissions festival, while using new technology, are striving for the same stubborn yet liberating reason their experimental ancestors did: They are mad scientists, in love with machines and the noises they make.
Audiophone is the debut release from mastermind Epps, who is also a successful video artist and teacher. This is a strange piece of plastic, but it comes from a record company that puts Commodore 64 programs onto vinyl, so one cannot be too surprised. In the now-classic "beeps and clicks" style, the music is sometimes violent and disorienting in its apparent randomness, while other moments seem playful and innocent. While listening to a piece of electronic audio art like Audiophone, your mind has nothing to do but wonder. Epps seems to approach his composition more like an audio sculpture than proper "songs". Instead of a bricolage of a million different sampled sounds, Epps uses the same basic twenty-odd building blocks of electronic bleeps and clicks to construct the album's 86 songs, and only strays from this formula to add subtle, sweet touches. While this may seem like a restriction, Epps is able to make more with less by treating the album as a whole while each song itself becomes a building block. In some tracks the sounds seem to stretch out and create unique rhythms, while other times Epps repeats the same short song several times in a row to create bizarre rhythms and melodies that jump across several songs. These intangible beats make me think of huge forests of electric insects in the eternal alternate reality that is cyberspace. Epps himself compares his sounds to "Infant computers speaking aloud"; though he’s using a limited language, there are infinite strange possibilities.
My best advice is to sit back and let these 86 tracks play out. Many of the songs are exact duplicates, while others last about four seconds. After a while, a strange calmness begins to wash over the brain as if your synapses are somehow clicking to the abstract, rhythmless chatter. Much akin in theory to looking at a "Magic Eye" 3D image, once you accept the madness and de-focus your brain, the slight undertones of beauty begin to reveal themselves. For example, sink into the seeming chaos of "Track 38" and the quiet, melodic notes of a piano begin to float to the surface.
Highly experimental music like this and its ancestors are -- almost to the point of defiance -- not created for everyone, but for those willing to accept the challenge, the rewards can be both intellectually and physically stimulating. It’s up to the listener to connect the audio dots; otherwise, it’s just a history of annoying noises.
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