The latest beautiful little Courier Sound package to drop is another based on an intriguing premise. Using the idea of William Burroughs‘s obsession with the number twenty-three, mysterious electronic artist Alien has concocted twenty-three pieces in twenty-three minutes.
Here, Alien is trying to reduce what the artist looks for in a track down to the briefest spark of inspiration, stripping everything else away and then thrusting it at the listener. It is quite a proposition and one that is remarkably filled with dramatically different clips.
All electronic and all visceral, and some themes do repeat; but considering how much is squeezed in to such a short time frame, that is no surprise, such as the kind of space echo effect that draws the listener into orbit appears on “Personal Opinion” and then reappears on “Terror Bomb”. But by then, the distorted steel drum riff of “Control Machine”, the treated faux-rock beat of “Mutilated Self”, the metallic bird song of “Newspapers Speak Disaster” and the broken-up voice and triggers of “Crushed Convertible” have whisked by. It is definitely the sort of thing that can be played again and again, because there is detail in the vignettes that you will undoubtedly miss the first time; the euphoric keyboard loop on “Lost Cosmonaut” or the Eyeless In Gaza keyboard sounds of “Talking Now” or even the funky but cold rhythm of “Yesterday’s Tomorrow”. It is hard to take it all in — and then you realise that some pieces are actually far more complicated than others; “Hallucinogen Fur Coat” is a thin drone, while the bouncy and gurgling “Million Years Lost” and the progressive electronica of “Burning Cosmonaut” are far more layered and experimental.There is a wide variety of loops used across the tracks on 23, but it wold be interesting to play this on repeat and see how many times it can go round before you start to notice the repetition. There are so many ideas here in such a short time that I can’t think of a comparison. 23 is pretty essential; I mean, where else will you find such a thing?
-Mr Olivetti-
