Johann Johannsson - IBM 1401, A User’s Manual (4AD)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
This is an orchestral album themed around an obsolete piece of technology (an old computer) that Johann's Dad worked on as one of the earlier employees of IBM in the sixties. Johann says about his dad; 'he was a keen musician, and he learned of an obscure method of making music with the computer'. On the recordings, there are samples instructing how to maintain the computer, so you get the idea Johann is interested in obsolete machines and trying to forge sensitive relations with the 'spirit' as he puts it of these machines.
These are themes that have been explored deeply throughout culture since the birth of modernism. But what Johann does quite skilfully here is to take such a theme and give it the beauty that you would normally associate with so called 'natural' themes such as seasons, and take it even further into romantic extremes. This is executed quite skilfully by drawing on influences that have been so long associated with these ideas that you are compelled not only to feel that these melodies and arrangements have a deep association, nature and love, but you are led to entertain the idea that there is something inherent in the music that is synonymous with the themes.
Of course what this brings to light is the fact that computers are as much a part of nature as any butterfly or season, which in turn brings about the re-realisation that you are immersed in something, that thing being nature or existence, everything that is around you. And the other association is dealt with also, Johannsson not only manages to make the observation that there are as many human faults with technology lovingly created by human beings as there is in the human that created it themselves. He goes further by communicating this love and also proposing a plethora of other possible emotions that could be associated with machines. By the end of the recording the position in which you are placing this emotion and sentiment gets completely lost and becomes as ambiguous as the themes themselves.
The structures of these recordings as orchestral music goes are comparatively uncomplicated, the compositions are often centred around a short repeated phrase and then carefully and subtly built upon, through this building the phrases are explored rather than convoluted, this exploration of the phrases along with the intense emotional sentiment, results in this being a very filmic sound. Filmic is a word that is too carelessly spread around anything instrumental, but the narrative behind this recording makes it escapable to notice the comparison between this recording and a soundtrack.
The album's finished with a momentary escape from the more melancholy aspects of the album, into an empowered positivity, lasting for only a couple of bars but changing the overall mood of the recording dramatically. Clever chap, Johannsson.
Artists in this article: Johann Johannsson
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