Yasunao TONE
"Solo for Wounded CD" -- CD

  Since the origins of the Fluxus movement to which Tone belongs, this japanese artist has been elaborating experimental sound pieces (including collaborations with david Tudor, Yoko Ono etc..). This recent record on Tzadik was a pleasant surprise for me, especially because of the promising title!
Indeed, this 2 tracks CD is a composition exclusively based on the disturbing sounds that dirty or damaged CDs produce when put in your beloved home Cd player! Result : a noisy chaos of digital crackles, screechs and blips !! Quite puzzling or annoying during the first minutes of listening (some people surely wanting to stop the player and check it!) ...but then I started to get used to these incredible bursting crackles and enjoyed this modern noise symphony; confessing however that after 30 minutes, I almost forgot during a few minutes that the record was playing in my living room (perhaps my ears were too saturated by these voluntary musical errors). Technically, Tone used CDs damaged by pinholes and covered with scotch pieces, and during the playback, he whacked with the elbow the CD player.
For some people, this CD is nothing else but a provocative statement (a pleonasm in the Fluxus vocabulary!) but I think that on the sound level, this soundwork is remarkable by its energy and innovation, beating up definitely by its originality all the arty attempts of nowadays scratching DJs.
 
Tzadik CD (1997) - time: 48.38