CD - Illegal Art
Oh Astro, aka Jane Dowe, an american artist known for her collaborations with Terre Thaemlitz ('Institutional Collaborative', published by Mille Plateaux) and her plagiarist raids ('Deconstructing Beck') is back for Illegal Art with six new tracks where sounds by Aesop Rock, Ennio Morricone and Missy Elliot are processed with a software written by herself. Ignoring copyright laws and supporting the music created only using samples, these are the tenets of this label, and are perfectly followed in this case, in the sequence of hesitating sounds, volume jumps, clicks and glitches which make up the tracks. Experimental yet very enjoyable, these contemporary drifts tangibly prove how ideas can shape new articulations and how the techniques are just a tool, just one of the ingredients in the making of a musical work. It's not important if the samples used are recognizable of not (the differences between Morricone and Missy Elliot are almost non-existent, considering the huge body of music available on the market). The end effect is sweetly alienating, mechanically seductive, and marks the great moment of those who, unconventionally, see music as something alive, which can still be the subject of transformations.
Aurelio Cianciotta