Search - Robert Henke :: Layering Buddha

EVEN NEWER MUSIC

Kerry Leimer | Makawao, Hawaii United States | 01/29/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Music, like all forms of expression, reached a crisis point some years ago, even though most people wouldn't know it. Literature's stop-gap answer was post-modernism. The visual arts took any number of directions. finally settling on anything and everything. Film remains largely trapped as pure narrative, the hangover of simple storytelling. Music, due to being mostly a popular form as well as being such a disposable commodity in our culture, has chugged along pretty much as usual, animated by dead-end compositional tricks and escalating obessions with production "values" that in the end result in little more than another love song. Or another hate song. Or another ode to pick-up trucks.



The crisis is in all cases one of origination. And Henke is among the few who has developed significantly new methods for originating music. Layering Buddha is an excellent example, taking the intimations of "found sound" and musique concret techniques to a whole new territory of heuristically guided outcomes. The processes used to develop these pieces are highly utilitarian and result in a music of great presence, perfect praxis and, might as well say it, utility. It is a machine music of unimagined and organic beauty, unencumbered by the contortions of ever more elaborate compositional systems that have yet to escape traditions so long and so desperately in need of change. Great stuff, again."

Thanks for beating us to it, mr. henke...thanks a lot.

B. Krnc | cleveland, ohio United States | 05/31/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"i was standing within a foot or two from mr. henke when he probably bought one of those machines from FM3 at MUTEK that year. i may be wrong, but i think i may have been. i would never have thought to do this with that thing, but thank god someone did. and of course being robert henke what he did with it makes the end product better than the sum of it's parts. he's a true genius and this recording blew me away. if you like MONOLAKE GOBI or are hip to SIGNAL TO NOISE or STUDIES FOR THUNDER, then pick this up. and if you can get to montreal by june 1st, he's going to play this live at S.A.T. don't be late. it's going to be huge..."