Rod Cooper - Accepting the Machine
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I will, before I start writing about Rod Cooper’s “Accepting the Machines”, be clear on one thing – I know nothing about composition theory. Music form me is the art of enjoying sound. Well, not always enjoying, sometimes it is more about experiencing sound.
The title of the work, Accepting the Machines, gives the listener a good indication of what to expect. The recording were made in places frequented by Cooper, using amongst others, self-built instruments. After the recording on various locations, Cooper, edited and tweaked the recorded sounds on a computer, something he confesses he only finally has got the grasp of.
Though the pieces has been worked through after the recording and edited, the focus has been on intuition, while working with the sounds. Cooper has stated that he has been looking for a “new combinations of sounds, electronic noise generation and noise found in nature”. As he puts it in the press statement – humans are not the only species on the planet to make music.
As I wrote earlier I do not know enough about musical composition to judge a record on that basis. What I can write about is the experience of a listener. For me, “Accepting the Machines” is on the cold and industrial side of field recordings, which is to say too far off. But each to his own.
Excerpts of “Accepting the Machines” can be found here
