Description

Operating in the legendary Cyclone warehouse space near Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, 7hz has functioned as one of the few SF venues that is exclusively dedicated to experimental sound art, and also has served as the live / work spaces (in the truest sense of the term) for Scott Arford (aka Radiosonde), Randy Yau (23five), and Michael Nine (aka Death Squad). During the fall of 2002, 7hz took their show on the road, as Arford, Yau, and Nine embarked on a European tour. This disc is essentially the tour support album, offering an exclusive sampling of each artist’s work. Arford’s sonic reconstitutions of video static have made for stunning audio / visual performances (almost unheard of in the visually sterile realm of laptop composition). Here, his contributions spit forth digitally corrosive bits of static and noise (which resemble remote control / shortwave detritus) along mechanized grids. Altogether, Arford’s tracks resemble the pained electric noise of those collaborations between Zbigniew Karkowski and Pita Rehberg. Yau defines his work as an “action concrete,” in which recordings of impromptu vocal outbursts have been dissected and reanimated through a number of electro-acoustic techniques, often sounding like a mutation of Robert Ashley’s classic “Automatic Writing” with far more jarring and confrontational results. Michael Nine’s work comes out of the Whitehouse / Con-Dom approach of primitive noise assaults as transgressive theater. All in all, an excellent introduction to these San Francisco artists. — Aquarius Records