Ikue Mori & Oval: More w/ Less

These are two albums from two unique computer musicians who like to do more with less.


Ikue Mori - Labyrinth (Tzadik)

A fantastic collection of song-length (averaging between 3 and 5 minutes) pieces, mostly comprised of heavily processed percussion samples.  For anyone curious about her methods, there's a nice short interview with her at the Squid's Ear.  She explains her evolution from a live drummer moving on to drum machines, and then finally arriving at a laptop.  Interesting to note that most of her sounds are taken from her old drum machines rather than sampled from acoustic sources.  This is also what I love most about this record: she limits herself to the use of electronic drums and really hones a unique and playful aesthetic.  Unlike other electronic artists like Lithops, early Oval (see below), Richard Devine, Pimmon, and Autechre, who seem to go to great lengths to obscure the origin of their sounds and sources, her techniques are more straightforward and in many ways much more enjoyable to listen to.  Also, there's a wonderful written piece of hers included on Arcana Vol 1, where she describes her approach to sound design as if she were sharing a food recipe.

"Day of Locusts"

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Oval - O (Thrill Jockey)

His first record in quite a while might also be my personal favorite.  The entire album uses a very similar approach:  layers mangled guitar-like sounds that glitch and pop wildly over beautiful chords.  There's a very natural feel to this album, almost like an "Oval goes acoustic" project, which, strangely enough, is somewhat true.  The description on Thrill Jockey's website is pretty illuminating:  As someone who, at points in his career, seemed more interested in his methods rather than the resulting music (deliberately scratching cds and using their unpredictable loop-points as a foundation, developing extremely custom and bizarre software, etc.), he apparently scaled down his methods dramatically for this album, using only a stock PC with its included music software and tried to push those limitations to its boundaries.  What's intriguing about this is that it still sounds very much like an Oval album, but stripped down to its essential components.  His sonic vocabulary is very limited, but he manages to achieve a similar aesthetic as Ovalprocess or SO with the unpredictable glitch and whirlwinds of harsh noise coddled by warm drones and semblances of melody.  I especially like the 2nd disc, which is a collection of 50 1-minute "ringtones" that uses the same sound source (a weird acoustic guitar hybrid) in creatively concise variations.
My only complaint is that for many tracks on the first disc, he incorporates very fake-sounding drum sounds playing very generic-sounding drum beats (the kind of drumbeats one might encounter on a cheap keyboard with pre-programmed play-along tracks).  This was most likely intentional, and it has grown on me a bit after a few listens, but it still catches me off guard everytime.

This is an example of Oval around circa 2000:
"04" (from OVALPROCESS) 

Here is an excerpt from 2010's O:
"Panorama"