Various Artists - Birmingham Sound Matter [Album]

Audiobulb

October 2, 2009, 03:23 PM

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"Right now heres a project for you Mr Lopez; grab some electronic artists, give them a few mic's and send them off into a city." That would be the voices in Spanish musical pioneer Francisco Lopez's head talking to him again. Oh no wait, it has happened, its been done. And here it is - "Birmingham Sound Matter" and it's collaboration of the weirdest, wonder-fullest, strangest, cl-ickiest, randomist sounds in one record, from Birmingham (of all places).

This concept is simple enough, but the content is a totally different kettle of fish cakes. You have to really understand what is going on before you can reach a conclusion to this latest release from Audiobulb. The Sheffield based independent label releases some of the most unique electronica to hit our playlists. "Birmingham Sound Matter" creates a compilation of sounds you wouldn't really pay any attention to in a normal setting. There are children playing, birds singing, bee's buzzing and cars wooshing past.

Francisco Lopez seems to be a very complex individual; by talking about "reality" and all sorts of different mind sets (this is all on the CD sleeve, not in the music). This is definitely Exploratory music. The headline to the album is mental enough for me "Typically, recorded sound is considered as a representation of reality. Birmingham Sound Matter demonstrates that a sound recording can also be considered as an entity by itself." An entity itself? Sounds like David Icke has had his footing in the door for this one.


Each track has had a different artist dip their musical wick into it. Layer by layer they must have had to tediously place each sound in a certain way, with a certain effect. 'Last Days" by Mark Harris sounds like the soundtrack to the film "Crash" with a warm ambient layer of synths and wobbly chords. Helana Gough's - 'Grau' has a glitch approach, with random bursts of scratchy energy and uncomfortable samples. I'm not quite sure what the hell she was sampling there!

This is music for the uber intellectual electronic music producer. It's just something that is so hard to understand, yet its magical in many ways. This is more like a soundtrack to a film really.

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