Futurismo - The Soundtrack To A Font
(P22)
20th Century
Ambient
Drum And Bass
Electronic / Experimental / Industrial
Industrial Rhythm
Techno
Trip Hop, Breaks, Dub, World-Fusion
(Very) Alternative
Contact
Futurismo is an American tribute in sound to the Italian Futurist movement (1908-1943) that produced avant-garde painting and the conceptual foundation of industrial music. Fast machines and war were the topics of their dynamic paintings, supporting the technological developments of pre-WW1 Italian Fascism. This violent aspect of their history is critiqued by minimalist Tony Conrad in his harmonic deconstruction of a nationalist song from WWII, "Beloved Comrade."
Most of these tracks are electronic music, including the ambient organ loops of Paul Szp's "Ch'il Futurismo" whose sounds were produced by the MetaSynth software that interpreted the colour and shape of image files, in this case the Futurismo typeface developed by the label's "type foundry." Several of the artists were inspired by Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto "The Art Of Noises," which called for an industrial music in 1913, from which the Seattle group Intonarumori, took the name of his noise instruments. The group, An Odessa Artery (including Mercury Rev's Jimy Chambers, who joins band mate Jonathan Donahue as XJ6 Donahue, on this comp) more directly contrasts mechanical and natural sounds in their piece "Photosynthesis" by mixing the rhythms of devices like laser printers and film projectors with the calls of insects and frogs. This interesting experimental music release also features a CD-ROM track with a font based on the parallel DaDa-ist movement.