Search - Tetsu Inoue :: Fragment of Dots

Beyond electronica

Alistair M. Isaac | Houston, TX USA | 07/17/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The future: goodbye sheet music, goodbye pentatonic scale, goodbye standardized timbres and instruments, goodbye notes. Sound is the new medium of expression and each piece of music has the potential to be a unique sonic world with its own, original organizational structure. This album fulfills the vision of sound and timbre as principles on the level of melody and harmony more fully than any other recording I've heard. The sound sources, some instantly recognizable (Modem and I) others mere electronic noise, blend smoothly throughout to form shifting, bubbling textures. Not ambient, as in some of Inoue's other releases, the overall sound is nevertheless extremely delicate and beautiful. A musician myself, this is the album that made me reconsider the digital medium. While I would heartily reccomend it to those interested in new music, especially that of the electronic variety, I have been surprized at how many of my friends, normally disdainful of that type of "noise," have flipped over "Fragment Dots." Break down the prison walls with a blade of grass!"

LISTEN WITH HEADPHONES

Aaron Zamarron | Belleville, MI United States | 04/23/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When I first got "Fragment Dots" I thought it was pretty nice, but I didn't really get it. I bought it expecting the ambient styles of his older work. The pieces were pleasant, but a bit jarring and scattered for ambient music. Then I read a review that complemented Tetsu on his skill for cataloguing and grouping sounds together. If you listen to the album in this manner, you will be very rewarded rather than if you listened trying to find a distinguishable melodic line, tempo, etc. I would have to say, rather than ambient, this album is more akin to composer-oriented academic electronic music like Ussachevsky or Varese(except it's digital, not tape).



The music can also be described as glitchy techno like Oval but, unlike Oval, Tetsu's music features a more "active beauty". Oval's music is usually organized in loops and I think it's great, but it can become predictable. Tetsu's compositions are almost like improvisations to me. Like a free jazz saxophonist, he sets out to evoke a mood, playing what he feels emotionally. And instead of blowing and pressing keys, he triggers many small soundfiles on a laptop. That's why the songs are so very linear--a song will start a certain way and never recapitulate. The only constants in these pieces are the mood.



This is not to say that Tetsu has completely abandoned his ambient characteristics. "Fragment Dots" is still very soft and delicate. There are many pleasant tones and textures to experience. Lords knows how long he spent trying to craft these synthetic sound-vectors and how to integrate them so perfectly with the real-life sounds of acoustic instrument fragments and field recordings. It all comes together as a sterile sounding recording, but not icey.



The fun of this music for me is to see how he puts all of these sounds together. Just sit there and let these trinkets of sound pour into your ears. It will make you feel warm and make you see the beauty in sound (both musical and supposed "un-musical").





oh yeah,

LISTEN WITH HEADPHONES (the panning is so nice)"