Hit Any Key

I’ve been trying to write a review for the past week or so about a new Creative Commons album, but no matter how hard I tried the words weren’t coming out. And then I released that the reason why I couldn’t write the review − the album didn’t inspire me. So I trashed that attempted review and I am moving on to an album that does excite − Jeff Kolar’s Start Up/Shut Down on the netlabel Panospria.

Lately I’ve been enamoured with literal computer music, that is music generated from computer sounds and noises such as Valentina Vuksic’s Tripping Through Runtime (Zeromoon) (review) or Gregrory Chatonsky’s podcast on Radius. Kolar’s two pieces focus on the bootup and shutdown processes of computing through various OS’s — Windows (3.1, 4.0, NT, 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista, 7, and Macintosh OS (10.0 Cheetah, 10.1 Puma, 10.2 Jaguar, 10.3 Panther). From my reading of the liner notes, Kolar takes the manipulate the sounds while  keeping them in real time to bring together two five-minute tracks of these processes. Not only is it interesting work, it’s beautiful as well.