Recorded live in New York in November 2009, 1:17 is one of those glorious conceptual pieces in which the premise – in this case, the use and re-use of a 0.7 millisecond snippet of sound originating from a Diskono collective concert in 2000, itself transformed gradually over the years into a one minute seventeen second blast of noise – is almost entirely irrelevant to the appreciation of the results as realised here.
Itself rendered as two sides of vinyl, it’s doubtless only a matter of time before the live 1:17 finds itself being further used and abused, perhaps expanding in size along the way. In the meantime, the second side (titled “1:17”, as is the first) brings up the squittering and jitterings, the 1/4” tape sounding like it underwent some near-brutal if not downright nefarious abuse at Seven’s hands, while the various hisses and sputters, not to mention whirrs, flutters, wheezes, clonks and clunks, could be any one of the three’s doing, quite frankly.
As observed before, none of the biographical or historical information is essential to enjoying the Dada sweep of snicker to hum nor to grokking the particular tones which running tape over the heads in ways which stretch – perhaps quite literally – its tolerances. As the penny (or other dense weight) drops into a resonant surface, and various chuckles echo across the soundscape, it’s apparent that the trio must have been having a whole lot of fun making and unmaking these sounds; perhaps the listeners can enjoy these multifarious and multiply-distended sounds as much as the concept too.-Richard Fontenoy-
