Not in a negative sense, Vienna-based mad scientist/producer Florian Hecker seems to make some of the most inaccessible music out there right now. So it wasn’t surprising to hear that he was collaborating with Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani for 2012’s Chimerization project, which combined an “experimental libretto” with the abstract synthesis on which Hecker’s a veritable expert. (I can think of no better way to attract the margins of artistic consumers than to bring on a guy who’s written and spoken extensively about “Rationalism” and related subjects so prodigiously it makes my out-of-school brain cry.)
Now, Hecker has re-recruited Reza for “the third chapter in the trilogy of text-sound pieces” (in case you lost count, the first was the just-mentioned Chimerization and the second was 2014’s Articulação). The newest installment is called A Script For Machine Synthesis. It’s out February 24 on Editions Mego and is said to “present a complex simplicity that spirals in an unending manner as an audio image of the uncanny valley.” (Something tells me this “uncanny valley” should be limited to children 10 and up.)
Hecker’s anti-hit-parade don’t stop there, though; because in addition to A Script For Machine Synthesis, Hecker has also just released Articulação Sintetico, a limited-edition cassette that, as the title suggests, purports to be a “complete resynthesis” of Articulação — which therefore pretty much makes it a “resynthesis” of the voice of artist Joan La Barbarba.
Buy Articulação Sintetico here, and pre-order Script right over here.
Articulação Sintetico tracklisting:
01. Synthetic Hinge
02. Modulator (Scattering Transform)
03. Synthetic Hinge
A Script For Machine Synthesis tracklisting:
01. Prologue
02. A Script For Machine Synthesis
03. Credits