Posted on: May 1, 2011 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Out now on Asthmatic Kitty, Leb Laze’s “Music For Troubled Machinery” is part of the latest in the ever-expanding, ever-experimental Library Catalog Series and perhaps conceptually the most interesting electronic in recent memory documenting the slow unruly death of the producers core production tool, the MPC 2000 (R.I.P.). Make sure to grab the free download of album standout “Static Radiates” remixed by Brooklyn-based house/dubstep producer Totem Test.

What started out as a total bummer–musical sketches and ideas hindered by a conked out machine–actually turned into an album. When this device begins to die it randomly “freezes” at any given moment, often times wiping out anything that has been created within its path. What is interesting though is when an MPC freezes it begins to uncontrollably spit out all of the sounds that are loaded within it in their raw and unedited form…over and over and over. This occurrence is like nothing ever heard. The machine begins to have a mind of its own.

Leb Laze began to record and embrace these freakouts, using them as a basis for the majority of the songs on this album..adding to them, enhancing them and/or sculpting around them. Two shorter pieces, “Revelations” and “Dial In/Dial Out” were actually created entirely from these freakouts. Think of this record and, most importantly, these two tracks, as his MPC’s last words–a testament to the idea that the nonliving world is actually very much alive.

from the Asthmatic Kitty Library Catalog Series

Volume 13

Leb Laze

“Music For Troubled Machinery”

www.asthmatickitty.com

librarycatalogmusicseries.bandcamp.com

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