Final Assurance Collection Vol 2: 1992-1994

genauer@math.stanford.edu

A great classical and experimental composer. His first release was called "Solstice" in 1995, so this is a collection of some of his earlier works from his formative period (he was 18-20 yrs. old). They were written while the composer was in Saitama, London, and Tokyo. The sounds are most often computer and synth. bleeps, bloops, sirens and whines, with ambient fuzz and static. Piano and guitar appear. The bleeps, bloops, sirens do have tone, and their random outbursts are subject to underlying rhythm. The song titles are often everyday objects e.g. "lettuce", "park", "pool", and listening to the tracks very occasionally I can hear (or have tricked myself into hearing) extreme abstractions of the sounds that accompany these objects (ok, so maybe not for lettuce). No FCCs.

Picks 1,3,7,9.

*1) Static over which sparse space-age bloops. A severely damaged music box. 60's Sci-fi.
2) Features patterns and repetition. Like a pinball machine on crack or 10 space arcade games playing at once.
*3) Guitar, the sound of something dropping on the floor.
4) Guitar harmonics. Background has quiet woodblocks. squeeling that sounds like the cries of a monkey.
5) Gunsprays of trashcans. piercing siren punctuated by the occasional synthesizer helicopter.
6) Piano, low brass, harpsichordish freakout halfway with what sounds like a distant train.
**7) Lots of bleeps! An intricate machine with a thousand moving parts each with its own bleep. Great rhythm.
8) Ringing in your ears accompanied by fuzziness, and very quiet sputtering engine in background.
***9) Atmospheric sparkles of light. Very pretty. Organ enters after a minute or two with a lower darker feel.
10) Unique in that it is just piano. Very empty, lots of sustain pedal. Almost new-age.
11) Sparse chord clusters of what sounds like almost a Rhodes.
12) Very interesting track as we can hear how sound of evening falling with crickets, dogs whining, and cars driving is approximated by Koji Asano's sounds.