The Noise & The City” is a compilation consisting of: 30 artists, 30 cities, 30 tracks, 30 pieces of artwork and 30 texts. The latest project/release from Adim is an ambitious one to say the least. And as they them selves point out the idea of using environmental sounds, as a base for creating music is not an entirely new one, but that does by no means mean that it is an uninteresting one. And as the level of urbanisation increases it is a highly relevant one at that. The diversity of the tracks is amazing, but then again there are 30 of them so the opposite would have been both surprising and disappointing. With a range of tracks this wide and with the different artists very different approaches and interpretations of the given task it is close to impossible to make a fair account of this release. There are however, in a sense two types of tracks on this release: traditional songs and sound collages, well traditionally on a project like this I suppose that the latter ones would actually be the traditional ones, enough said on this topic. The point being that I will not and cannot give an account on all the participating tracks. The ones that really catches my attention are: London’s Stendec and their superb track “Office to Studio, 15 min walk” which probably is not only the track that I like best on the entire compilation, but also most likely the best track they’ve ever done! Lucky Adim! Literally jetting to the other side of the world we find an extraordinary beautiful track by Sydney’s Robokoneko entitled “Brume”. Returning back to Europe and Manchester’s The Remote Viewer contribution is an excellent and minimal e-dub track. Brussels’ aMute offers clever use of vocals in “”Cyclic Brussels Give Up”, Evanston’s Pan America gives you the pulsating dubby “Outside” or Paris’ Sogar and the fragile glass like “Bau2”. It is also highly recommended to visit Adim’s digital home and view the artwork and read the text that accompanies each of the releases. It’s a trip around the ever-shrinking world, it gives an insight into the artist’s views and reasoning and it is nothing but a snapshot of the world, as we know it today (the extreme unbalance of the distribution of wealth aside). “The Noise & The City” is a testament to the immense power of the non-destructive side of human affairs, creativity and ideas and the potential of greatness residing in all members of the human race.
electronic desert ≡ revisited + extended