As the byline describes with rapt attention, this is "spontaneous, improvised, slow crescendo by every audience ever." Yes, it is what it says: an entire disc of applause. A ceaseless, neverending, nay-eternal timestretch of the manic, slavish response of rawkshow sheep goggling tight spandex cockjocks, the disgusting, hamfisted crapclaps of the orgasmic bourgeoisie, the pre-pubescent squeals of Britney Spears fanclub flambés. Whatever: the show must go on, and when it ends, it ends as the only thing the show ever wanted and will want: its fresh, stinking load of applause dumped in your lap like tomorrow's burrito and six-pack on the exit-run. Which is to say that this is quite possibly the most daring finger-flip of an avant-garde attack to hit since, well, since Sid's punkspit, Zappa's lights-on gyrodances, Dada's destruction, and Breton's audiente alienation. It's up there, a useless disc for perfect times of utter irony in the face of a world gone mad slapping their fatty, flabby appendages together. Three cheers for the bravado of Autodigest.
Tobias C. Van Veen
Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels klatscht sich selber Beifall, bis das Fleisch von den Knochen fällt. Gegenstand und Anlass des Jubels sind egal, „it is the process of consumption, not its object, that we are currently enjoying.“ Konsequenter Weise bringt AUTODIGEST bei Ubiquitous Eternal Live (Ash International 6.1 + Crónica 016~2004), Vol.2 der Reihe „A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded“, nur noch das ewige Geknatter patschender Hände, Standing Ovations als Event per se. „Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten what exactly we were cheering for.“ Die Spirale der Verpoppung von Allem dreht durch und der Song bleibt immer der gleiche: Buy and enjoy and buy and enjoy and buy... Die Generation „Ich-bin-doch-nicht-blöd“ im Zwiespalt zwischen Logo und Schnäppchen und immer weit draußen auf der Hysterieskala jenseits des Superbusterblasterlativs. Starkult, Warenkult, Ichkult. Für die von Autodigest geloopte Megaekstase lässt sich schwer ein Grund vorstellen, der sie real verursacht haben könnte - nicht die Landung von coolen Aliens, nicht die gentechnische Wiederherstellung der Beatles, kein Jackpot für alle, keine Wiedervereinigung, kein Ende aller Kriege und keine We-are-the-Championship. Aber wenn Nike die Preise halbieren würde?
Crónica's arch satirists Autodigest serve up a second volume of postmodern pranks. Last year's Volume 1 took as its theme the reduction of real huma experience to data streams and binary code, resulting in a sonic illustration of a world sucked down a technological plughole. funny and frightening as the concept was, the spluttering digital momentum of the superbly executed music was equally strong.
Volume 2 acts as a kind of punchline to the earlier work. The album purports to collect the sounds of every audience ever recorded and crush them into on hour-long piece. As with its predecessor, the conceptual basis of the piece is simultaneously silly and unsettling. Autodigest believe that as all art is crunched into numbers our responses to it can be as well. this is an idea likely to give any liberal aesthetes the creeps, if not send them flying into an apoplectic rage. Luckily, the new work is as carefully contrived as the older volume, allowing the listener to ponder these worrying themes at leisure as the piece unfolds purposefully.
Experiencing the sound of an endless clamour of stadium crowds is spookily disorientating, especially when individual cries and wails are picked out and the atmosphere changes from one of mass ecstasy and adoration to one of existencial pain and private alienation. Autodigest seem to be positing the notion that we get what we deserve, that the album's opening and closing announcement "Thank you and goodnight!" is a farewell to all human-mediated cultural activity.
The concept of a piece of art announcing that art is dead may not be startlingly original, but Autodigest's work might just be powerful enough to make you start to suspect that it's true.
Keith Moliné
Accompanied by mysterious pictures of nearly deserted places, but with a blurred photo of a cheering crowd in a stadium or concert hall, Autodigest's new installment is a tough one to, ahem, digest. Conceived as a "history of audience applause" ("Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten what exactly we were cheering for... Until we eventually stopped cheering, as nobody was playing anyway"), the hour-long track is exactly made of that: endlessly looped samples of applauses and cheers and delirious screaming. No other sounds, except for a minimal drone which actually sounds like a kind of resonance or echo of that hyper-exposed apocalyptic mess. Quoting the press sheet, "[The piece] is presented as less of an archive and more of a critical eye loaded with a few conceptual cards as foundations, from Debord to Baudrillard, from Harvey to Adorno". Whatever. It was fun to read a few reviews which have been published meanwhile, as they spanned from "pure genius" to "pure crap" to a more diplomatic "most bizarre record of 2004". I recall listening to an untitled work by Francisco López and thinking it was a bad joke as it was only crickets sounds throughout, then re-listening to it some years later and losing myself in it with amazement. Save for the political/conceptual differences, this is a similar case: it starts sounding like a joke, then it finally makes your bowels churn. The screaming voices, once looped and overlapping in a droning mass, pass from pop hysteria to pure tragedy - this could be a nightmare of Altamont. But on a deeper level, what makes this cd so frightening to me is the sense of futility and loneliness oozing from this sweaty über-audience - Autodigest coldly re-creates and contemplates modern nonsense as in an in vitro test.
Eugenio Maggi
La Crónica si sta velocemente imponendo all'attenzione degli appasionati di ellettronica 'colta' grazie a pubblicazioni che cercano di rimettere in gioco il discorso intrapeso dal movimento glitch. (...)
Il secondo volume realizzato dal progetto Autodigest prosegue invece all'insegna dell'eccedenza: un'unica traccia interamente registrata con applausi e urla del pubblico, un progressivo climax che, come è scritto nelle note di copertina, chiama in causa "La Societè Dello Spettacolo" di Debord. Ma anche Adorno e (ovviamente) Baudrillard, insistendo sulla meccanicità della fruizione fonografica, sull'apatia e sulla stupida ingenuità dell'approccio all'arte in un periodo storico in cui 'è il processo di consumo, non il suo oggetto, che stiamo attualmente vivendo'. Impossibile, dunque, prescindere dalle intenzioni ideologiche di "Ubiquitous Eternal Live" per la valutazione di un album così assolutamente fuori dall'ordinario.
Michele Casella
Questo Autodigest inizia a starmi parecchio simpatico. II primo volume della sua storia compressa di tutto quello che è stato registrato (BU#69) conteneva una poltiglia indistinta di noise digitale alternata da stasi ambientali, a significare il riassunyo, 'velocizzato' e iper-condcnsato, di tutti i materiali musicali registrati nella storia della musica (!), come se 1'autore avesse veramente riregistraro tutto quanto e messo in un'ora di tempo. Il bello è che ci sono stati recensori che ci hanno creduto. Ma questo, come dire?, è il bello di Internet...
Nella secunda parte della sua opera di ricognizione intorno alla musica il nostro amico passa all' "Ubiquitous Eternal Live: spontaneous, improvised, slow crescendo by every audience ever hosted", come da sottotitolo. Avete già indovinato cosa contiene il CD? Esatto: un'ora di (condensazione di) applausi e fischi di mille pubblici bercianti e vociferanti in attesa dei musicisti di turno. Pazzesco. Solo applausi, fischi e urla. Nelle note del primo CD Autodigest citava Baudrillard, qui tira in ballo la Società dello spettacolo di Debord. E a ragione. Autidigest ha compreso perfettamente cosa sono i tempi che stiamo vivendo e ha riassunto in un saggio in due parti l'idea di fine del mondo che ci trapassa la vita in questi anni. L'aspetto musicale conta zero, sia nel mondo esterno che per i suoi stessi CD: nel rimescolamento infinito della musica pop e nella banalità della cosiddetta 'avanguardia': è quanto dice nelle note, ed è importante. Per il primo disco scrivevamo che si trattava di un "segnale dell'imminente fine del mondo"; adesso il quadro è finalmente completo. E se quello valeva (~), questo è quanto meno da (~).
Stefano I. Bianchi
Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap… L'ovni sonore de l'année ! Soit l'alignement ininterrompu, pendant une heure, d'applaudissements captés à la fin d'une multitude de spectacles. Un patchwork à mettre au compte d'Autodigest, un des projet les plus emblématique du "media-label" Crónica. Un mystérieux collectif (ou artiste solo) se faisant un malin plaisir de dynamiter le rapport à la musique selon une philosophie esthétique se réclamant autant de Baudrillard et David Harvey que de Debord… Après avoir donné le concert le plus court jamais enregistré (une demi-seconde, montre en main, à Porto en juin dernier !) puis avoir compressé un nombre hallucinant d'œuvres musicales sur un seul CD, formant ainsi une sorte d'apocalypse bruitiste, Autodigest s'attaque maintenant au coda ultime de toute oeuvre, son acclamation par un public fervent. Passé les premières minutes d'étonnement puis d'enthousiasme (comme le rire, ces ovations distillent une ferveur très communicative) et enfin de stupeur (mais qu'est que c'est que ce truc ?!), on fini par entendre autre chose ! Par percevoir des variations qui transforment ces standing-ovations en une étrange symphonie… Longtemps après, lorsque nous sommes définitivement immergés dans ce brouhaha, des ondulations se révèlent et ces clameurs finissent par ressembler un peu au bruit de la mer que l'on croit percevoir lorsque l'on se rive un coquillage sur l'oreille… Oeuvre conceptuelle par excellence, ce disque est vraiment un "objet" à part qui n'a d'égal que certaines productions des labels Foton et Firework Edition (Leif Elggren). Bravo, re-clap clap et fermez le banc !
Laurent Diouf
Why applaud? To make a noise, to show approval, because it's part of the social contract of seeing a performance. (The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, who has hearing problems, reportedly requests that his audience shows its appreciation by snapping fingers instead of clapping.) Applause is an artless noise; it reinforces the power relationship between the receptive mass slapping its palms together and the (relatively) focused expertise on the stage. It also can be a demand for a present everyone knows will be awarded, a way to call back a performer for the inevitable encore, the lagniappe without which we consider our experience incomplete.
If you want to hear applause for its own sake, there's Autodigest's A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live (Ash International/Crónica). The back cover describes it as a "spontaneous, improvised, slow crescendo by every audience ever." It is exactly an hour of applause, bookended by a commanding voice twice announcing, "Thank you! Good night!" It's not just the kind of ooh-that's-good applause heard on Burma's live albums; it's riotous, maniacal, progressively louder and more rapturous clapping and cheering from an audience that demands more. Shrieks leap out of it like dolphins. As the shouting and clapping redoubles and layers over itself, faint patterns emerge. They become overtones, notes, even faint tunelets. The applause can become the featured attraction, and does to anyone who buys or hears the album. It can go on forever. "Best played in 'Repeat' mode," a note says.
There's one other brilliant joke on Ubiquitous Eternal Live: When you put the CD in a computer, it identifies itself as "I am sitting in a room." That's the title of a 1966 piece by composer Alvin Lucier, in which he recorded himself reading a short text about what he was doing (and stuttering a bit), then played it back in the room where he'd recorded it and recorded that, and repeated the process until the decay of the source material and the room's resonant frequencies had together evolved into a single faintly fluctuating tone that sounds like the overtones of the applause. (Mission of Burma's Miller actually did something conceptually similar on his 1990 album Oh (guitars, etc . . . ): "F.W.R.," short for "The Fun World Reductions," is a series of playbacks of Burma's recording "Fun World," doubling the speed each time, until it's no more than a quarter-second burst of trebly static.)
On the front cover of Ubiquitous Eternal Live, there's a picture of an empty bed being hit by morning sunlight; the audience is still out clapping, or maybe we're the audience. Behind the disc itself, there are two X-rays of hands. An audience's unsated desire for more can make them slam together hard, hundreds of times. What will it do to those bones?
Douglas Wolk
Voici un disque spécialement destiné aux chroniqueurs qu+il défie par son concpet initial radical. Si l'audace artistique est amplement auscultée, décryptée, décortiquée par les journalistes encartés ou passionnés, l'audace éditoriale des labels l'est beaucoup moins, peut-être par réflexe consumériste qui veut que la démarche de chroniqueur renvoie fatalement à l'acte commercial de production d'un produit, même si la bonne volonté non lucrative des protagonistes n'est pas toujours à mettre en doute. Ce second volume de l'anthologie très spéciale de la musique selon Autodigest pourrait donc apparaître comme un suicide commercial s+il n'était pas inscrit dans une démarche partagée entre le situationnisme et et la critique musicologique. La plage unique de ce disque, uniquement composée d'applaudissements de concerts avec de variations et des intensités successives, expose la nature symbolique du disque dans une société du spectacle et de la consommation de masse. La musique dite d'avant-garde elle-même tend à devenir une nouvelle form de pop, la précédente étant tombée dans la fange nostalgico-recycleuse. C'est alors bien leur propre processus consumériste qui excite les auditeurs et non plus leur intérêt dans le contenu artistique du sopport. Ce fatalisme est exacerbé par une ironie poussée jusqu'au non-sens, jusqu'à l'invitation à activer le mode "repeat". Ce live ubiquiste éternel est aussi un pied de nez à l'industrie du disque qui joue la victimisation doublée d'une diabosilation des effets d'un système qu'elle a elle-même engendré par pur intérêt mercantile, dans le mépris total de l'intelligence du public. Ce second volume peut donc être perçu comme une forme d'hommage à ce système autodestructeur, un disque à la fois humaniste et radical à ranger auprès du single au papier de verre "I'm Psycho for your love" de Dust Breeders.
Jérôme Langlais
In den Diskursen der Photographie und der bildenden Kunst geht die Idee ja schon etwas länger um: die Aufstellung eines Kanons, einer Bibliothek von archetypischen Bildern, die individuelle Bildproduktion eventuell einmal überflüssig machen. Ein erhellendes Beispiel aus den 60er Jahren ist Hans-Peter Feldmanns "Bilderfundus" aus vermeintlich unkünstlerischen Babyphotos und Passbildern, der Fragen über die Wahrnehmung und Einzigartigkeit, über die Grammatik und Semantik massenproduzierter Bilder aufwirft. Mit der Möglichkeit der Speicherung des flüchtigen Mediums Musik, speziell in Zeiten der digitalen Datenkompression, war fast klar, dass so etwas auch an und mit Musik versucht wird. Mit einem gewissen Augenzwinkern, der Unmöglichkeit und Vermessenheit ihres Anliegens bewusst, haben AUTODIGEST mit "A Compressed History Of Everything Ever Recorded. Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live" (Cronica) dieses Prinzip auf das Klatschen, auf die Publikumseuphorie von Konzertaufnahmen angewandt. Als Musik im üblichen Sinn funktioniert das nicht, als scharfer kulturdiagnostischer Kommentar aber umso mehr.
Frank Eckert
Le label portugais cronica continue à explorer avec une curiosité et une intuition rare la matière sonore pour en extraire des axes de recherches didactiques et philosophiques inaccoutumés. Depuis Ash int, on n'avait pas eu vent d'aussi originaux pivots de réflexions. En un sens, l'ombre de MC Harding, boss du label Ash n'est pas loin puisqu'il co-signe ce second volume d'Autodigest. Le premier volume s'était évertué à stigmatiser les affects et les syndromes inhérents à la compression digitale ; Abandon de la haute fidélité au profit de la rapidité, la vitesse plutot que la subtilité. Ce deuxième volume est l'occasion de creuser une nouvelle frange, une autre entrée sur la production de sons. Il s'attache ainsi, en s'appuyant sur la diffusion actuelle via les nouveaux supports, à critiquer sous un angle cynique cet état de fait, l'illogisme absolu qui veut qu'on puisse avec une simplicité toujours plus grande avoir accès à la production mondiale sonore alors que le temps (non élastique) ne permet pas d'en apprécier le contenu, ni d'en découvrir le charme réel lors de lives Cela se traduit sur disque en une superposition jubilatoire et crescendo d'audiences et de publics en fin de concerts, standing ovation, applaudissements renouvelés, qui au fil du disque se stratifient les uns aux autres pour donner au final un malstrom sonore (peut-on encore parler de sonorités ?) absolu. Des bruits de mains, des cris de joie pour nous rappeler cette phrase en pochette intérieure " Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten what exactly we were cheering for… " Une démarche jouissive dans ces vues, proches des théories de Toffler, Baudrillard et Debord et enthousiasmante dans ses fins même si on écoutera pas le cd en boucle. Drôle et profond.
Julien Jaffré
Like an eviscerated live performance with its innards trailing in the dust, A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded Vol 2 captures the sounds of applause post-performance, and extends them into a veritable orgy of hand to hand combat. Or so it seems after 50 minutes of non-stop clapping, cheering, whooping, and at some stages crys of either pain or ecstacy, it’s hard to tell. Far from the typical ‘clap your hands everybody’ shouts of a live experience, Autodigest have overlaid ovations from what could be innumerable performances, it’s hard to tell, as over the fifty minutes of clapping the energy never lets up - it’s like one big encore. Though it’s pretty much a one-trick pony; the joke of the endless applause can wear thin pretty quickly - but like an incessant car alarm, as one’s ears become attenuated to the relentless barrage, new textures, structures and timbres appear, and the excitement that a hyped crowd elicits ebbs and flows. It’s a strange but satisfyingly quirky release, that ultimately poses quite serious questions regarding the nature of crowds, the human condition, the infectious nature of applause, and even the very notion of music in what seems like an inane exercise.
DH
Mit diesem Release darf ich mich zur Gruppe der Legastheniker zählen. Wider besseren Wissens versucht die Wahrnehmung mir zu vermitteln, dass da Audiogeist und nicht Autodigest steht. Diese Unverbesserlichkeit liegt vermutlich darin begründet, dass der hier anzutreffende einstündige Applaus natürlich noch eine weitere Ebene in sich birgt. Es wird nicht die Art Applaus nachvollzogen, die nach erlebtem kulturellen Genuss einen Puffer schafft, um den Widereintritt in eine gewohnte Wirklichkeit zu ebnen, sondern es geht um jenes wilde, von Johlen und Kreischen angeheizte Applaudieren, wie es bei grossen Rockkonzerten oder Fussballspielen anzutreffen ist. Momente, in denen sich ein Publikum in seiner Rolle als Publikum oft bis an die Granze der Besinnungslosigkeit selber feiert. Neben wirklich komischen Momenten offenbart sich dabei aber zunehmends die Eigenschaft des Hörers als entpersonalisierter Konsument. Für Autodigest stellt der bloße Konsum von Musik ein viel tiefergehenderes Problem unserer Zeit dar als die viel bejammerte Krise der Musikindustrie. Im Zeitalter von 20.000 Musikstücken aus der Jackentasche ist es nun wirklich einerlei, ob diese mal gekauft, gerippt, gezogen oder gebrannt wurden. Vielmehr markiert die permanente Verfügbarkeit und das notwendige Verwalten von Musik eine neue Qualität: einen beiläufigeren und geringeren Stellenwert hatte Musik noch nie und somit darf sie sich selbst dieser Tage den individuellen Soundtrack in die Entfremdung bereiten. Thank You! Good Night!
PP
Avec leur projet conceptuel plutôt dingue capable de jouer des concerts d'une seconde comme de compresser en un seul album toute l+histoire de la musique, les Portugais anonymes d'Autodigest poursuivent leur exploration des limites de la composition à l'heure où quelques secondes suffisent à télécharger un titre qu'il faudra cinq minutes pour écouter, et peut-être deux mois pour composer. Pour ce faire, ils utilisent cette fois-ci le biais de l'album live. Evidemment, il serait trop facile de s'en tenir là, et chez Autodigest, le concert, forme "brute" et immédiate du rapport entre l'artiste et son public, est avant tout un objet sociétal qui mérite d´être étudié. Que serait un concert sans la musique? Que resterait-il si seuls les spectateurs étaient présents? Résulte de cette interrogation délirante une heure d'applaudissements, de sifflements et de foule en délire compilée et remixée à partir de la totalité des albums live sur lesquels Autodigest a pu mettre la main. Hypnotique autant qu'agaçant, Ubiquitous Eternal Live, avec sa dynamique sans cesse avortée et ses mouvements internes, est un OVNI, un de ces disques que l'ón ne sait vraiment s'ils méritent d'être écoutés, en boucle, comme le suggèrent ses auteurs, ou simplement considéré comme uns curiosité situationniste de plus.
Jean-François Micard
Und hier kommt er: eine Stunde lang Applaus. Tut gut, nech? Sirius: das Audiokonzept?projekt Autodigest nimmt sich konsequent und mit etwas help from its theoretical friends Debord, Baudrillard, Harvey oder Adorno dem medialen Zustand von Musik in Zeiten an, in denen wir sie schneller runterladen als hören können. Das konsequente Projekt, legendär durch das kürzeste Konzert der Welt (halbe Sekunde), nimmt sich eines der letzten analogen auratischen Audio-Mysterien unserer Zeit an: dem Publikumsapplaus, und kreiert einen unglaublichen tragikomischen Drone für euer soziales Kopfwohnzimmer.
At first, it makes you think of a bad joke or a divertissement: an infinite round of cheer and applause sampled from live recordings, more or less the same for long minutes. Then you notice it: there's a drone - a dark, deep growl - lurking under all this mess. The low buzz slowly grows, while the voices start sounding tense, saturated with negative energy in dire need of exploding. And explode they do, in the shape of "soloists" (male and female fans) screaming their lungs out of bodies like if they were skin-burnt in hell flames; this progressively apocalyptic mess literally ices me (no pun intended). Such a "reality based" composition is certainly uncommon; I can only recall Ror Wolf's "Der ball ist rund", made with layers of football TV speakers' voices - but "Ubiquitous Eternal Live" is sonically devastating, nerve-shattering and right to the target, which is the description of the totally idiotic behaviour and utter desperation intrinsically present in all kinds of people - especially when amassed. We're all destined to be eaten by the "blob" that's everyday life's brain deterioration. Autodigest is a genius.
Massimo Ricci
Autodigest machen es der hörerschaft nicht leicht, schnell-beschleunigte Tonsamples und Sprachaufnahmen sind lärmend übereinander geschichtet, um uns dann wieder abrupt in das digitale nichts zu schicken. Komprimierte Tonaufnahmen jeglicher Tonquelle bringen die freiheit des konsumrausches auf den punkt: warum sich mit weniger zufrieden geben als mit Autodigest ? CDs sind spottbillig und die gewinnspanne ist hoch, so veröffentlicht jeder und jede ihre akustischen erzeugnisse, meistens ohne sich die frage zu stellen ob dies jemand hören möchte oder nicht. Bescheiden sind die auflagen, meist limitierte stückzahlen von produkten von denen sowieso nicht mehr hätte verkauft werden können. Damit man doch dann alles hat und keine ängste aufkommen etwas verpasst zu haben empfehlen Autodigest kompressionen, natürlich im Chamber Mix oder live in Stockholm komponiert von jedermann.
Aujourd'hui, ils poussent le concept un peu plus loin. Après avoir détruit la musique, maintenant qu'il ne reste plus rien, à l'heure où celle-ci se dématérialise sur internet, il ne reste plus que les auditeurs, le public, et c'est ce public qui fait l'objet de ce deuxième volet.
Le disque ne contient qu'un seul morceau d'une heure, sur lequel on entend le public applaudir. La musique est complètement absente. Le morceau commence par une brève séquence bruitiste nous faisant penser à un vaisseaux spatial franchissant la vitesse de la lumière, nous téléportant dans l'univers d'Autodigest : les membres d'un groupe lancent un "Thank you !... Good night !!" et les applaudissements fusent. Pendant une heure ils ne ralentiront pas, tout juste laisseront-il un peu de place à des cris hystériques d'une foule en délire. Et Autodigest ne fait pas les choses à moitié. Les enregistrements qui doivent leur servir de matière première ont certainement été effectués dans des salles immenses, voire même des stades pour obtenir un tel résultat. Le morceau termine comme il a commencé, "Thank you !... Good night !!" et la même séquence bruitiste pour revenir à la réalité.
Alors quoi ? Délire conceptuel ? Certes, mais encore ? On pourrait y voir là le rêve d'un artiste qui n'aura jamais autant d'applaudissements, et qui du coup enregistre l'ovation de ses rêves. Ou bien encore comme un hommage au public oublié sur le premier volume.
Toujours est-il que Autodigest poursuit son engagement, sa recherche, sa critique de la société du spectacle, d'une soit disant culture "pop" en mettant l'accent sur sa futilité (ici le public n'applaudit personne) et le besoin que nous avons de nous distraire, de nous amuser, d'aimer et de le faire savoir.
Un disque qui ne laissera personne indifférent et qui devrait même provoquer des réactions très tranchées. Entre génie et foutage de gueule, nous avons choisi.
Fabrice Allard
Consumers now find nothing expensive. Nevertheless, they suspect that the less anything costs, the less it is being given them... When thrown in free, the now debased works of art... are secretly rejected by the fortunate recipients, who are supposed to be satisfied by the mere fact that there is so much to be seen and heard. Everything can be obtained.
- Theodore Adorno The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
On first listening, this recording might fool you into thinking that the release is merely a very clever, conceptual dig at the present day circumstances of the music industry.
Reading somewhat like a manifesto, the press-release hails "the collapse of music as we know it," and describes Ubiquitous Eternal Live as an audio illustration of this collapse. The press release suggests that our relationship with music has been changed "beyond redemption" through music's widely spreading availability and points out bitterly (and truthfully) that we "can [now] download music much faster than we can listen to it." Ash International and Cronica are not the first people to speculate that ease of availability devalues culture; The press release openly cites Theador Adorno as a conceptual cornerstone to the ideas behind developing Ubiquitous Eternal Live, along with Guy Debord and other "conceptual cards."
Autodigest's first release, AUTODIGEST - A COMPRESSED HISTORY OF EVERYTHING EVER RECORDED, VOL. 1:, "proposed an aural illustration of current syndromes in digital compression which abandon fidelity, subtlety, and complexity in favour of speed, efficiency, and endless storage capabilities," and so was exploring some of the sonic deficiencies of highly compressed music - the inevitable consequence of everything being encoded in MP3 format, so that we can have "the ability to stuff 20,000 (or whatever) songs" in our front pockets.VOL. 2 has evolved directly out of this first work, but the concepts have arguably become more complex in Ubiquitous Eternal Live. On first listening, it's not easy to see how hearing over an hour of progressively more hysterical audience clapping and applause is a cultural investigation of our contemporary relationship to music; even less easy to see how this work interrogates how we value music in the new contexts provided by completely altered distribution systems. That is, it's not easy to see this until you realise that you can't use the recording as " an endless private soundtrack for one's earphones," the way most music is now experienced.
As you listen to Ubiquitous Eternal Live, you realise it can't be comfortably thrown on in the background while you do the dishes; it can't be slung into the player while you drive somewhere; and it probably doesn't work well in a discman either. The only way to listen to this recording, is to sit down, remove all other distractions, and envelop yourself in what is a very masterfully collaged and seamless piece of audio work. The crescendo builds increment by increment; what starts as the tense apprehension at the start of a concert, becomes the screaming, mass-hysteria of some kind of apocalyptic terror. The human voice is captured in some of its most raw and cathartic moments here, as fans scream and holler for a conspicuously absent "main act." Then you realise, this is the main act. Perhaps it's greatest achievement as a political statement on "the state of music at the beginning of the 21st century," is to simply resist distribution along all the regular channels. This recording will not be put on in the background in bars for people to quietly enjoy while they discuss the results of the league football match. Banks won't buy it to play in their branches while customers fill out their direct debits. It has, through the very nature of its own sonic language, defied the possibility of being quiet, easily disseminated audio wallpaper. It is, however, of and in itself, a very intense and enlightening listening experience.
Reading through various theorists and pages on this work, which is a joint release between Ash International (UK) and Cronica Electronica, (Portugal) one thing puzzled me: why the image of the deserted bed on the front cover of the CD? And then I remembered Guy Debord, paragraph 21, Separation Perfected, The Society of the Spectacle:
The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.
The back cover of the CD refers to The Society of the Spectacle, and asserts that "it is the process of consumption, not its object, that we are currently enjoying." Perhaps to interrogate this idea, to explore what eternal consumption, spectacle and expectation might sound like, is to refute the desire to "sleep." This work is a refusal to make something that can go on the intercom of any company in between the reglar announcements of "we appreciate your call," and so on. This music will not be played in hotel lobbies or lifts, barely there, seemingly invisible, maintaining comfortable yet false atmospheres. This work is very much awake, saying "Hey! Sit up and listen to me!" Regrettably though, this might only be noticed by the people who already know and enjoy the theories whose ideas comprise its conceptual bedrock.
Reviewed by Felicity Ford
Felicity Ford is a sound-artist and writer. Her most beloved possession is her shiny, red accordion, but her advancement on this instrument is hampered by a frequent desire to play with the internet instead of practising arpeggios.
After a highly interesting and surprising debut (see review on this website), Autodigest presents their second work. This time it is released on both Cronica and Ash International.
While the first work focussed on highly processed and very abstract digital sounds, this work is a bit less intense. The CD contains one long track that is made up entirely of various audiences cheering and applauding. This results in one hour of pure applause, which at certain points almost becomes a mantra or some weird sort of drone. This long stretched ‘noise’ has quite a comical effect, but is also very interesting, since it affects our senses in a certain way. Because the applause is stretched for so long, it sometimes loses its ‘recognizable’ character and turns into a very weird sort of repetitive noise (try repeating the same word over and over, and you will see that it loses it’s meaning this CD has the same kind of effect).
Although this work is quite fascinating, it does not really live up to my expectations. The first disc has been in my CD-player very often, and proved an interesting CD to listen to. I doubt that this CD will be played over and over again by me, since it is far more (too?) conceptual. Nevertheless, this constant applause may be very appealing to the egomaniacs out there…
TD
Just like the first volume, I really like the title of this work. In this first volume Autodigest delt the compression of music, the new volume is about 'all the audiences ever recorded and has them share one hour of hysterical, progressively apocalyptic applause'. And that's what you get: people clapping their hands, cheering, shouting. On end. It's probably an extensive loop being repeated. Or maybe not.
Yes, this is minimal music indeed. If 'music' is a term to be applied to this. Is it good? I don't know. Is it bad? I don't know that either. Do I like it? I don't know. It's certainly a CD to impress your friends with, if you want to show off some of the weirdness of your record collection. The weirdest thing I have come across in 2004 for sure.
FdW