TONNE / HAKAN LIDBO / SCANNER
/ SI-CUT.DB
soundtoy [V.1]
CD, Bip Hop
The Tonne Soundtoy [V.1] is a nice, little software, where the user can
drag little samples into a sequencer on an intuitively understandable GUI
with fast results. There is no recording-mechanic integrated, so that has to
be done with whatever your computer (Mac or PC) offers you. Everyone who has
ever played around with producing music on a computer (and who hasn’t?)
knows that the functionality and abilities of the software and the available
sample-library are the main points of what will come out. Therefore it is
important, if you want to make music this way, to get the right tool for you
or use as many tools as you can (which is also a matter of money, of course,
but maybe you’ve got a friend who is a computer-wizard and has a nice
library of copied, cracked or plain stolen software at hand for you. Who
hasn’t?). The soundtoy offers ten samples to every track (I’ll get to
that in a second) and they are all rather simple, spheric and electronic.
Therefore the sounds you will compile are also simple and spheric and
electronic, but that can be a very intriguing thing, if you like to dive
into the nuances of sounds and noises.
Bip Hop has found four artists who used this little soundtool to create
some music and on this CD, next to the software, you’ll find two tracks of
each artist. There is, of course, Tonne himself, who programmed the whole
thing, as he is a semi-professional programmer for visuals for music and has
already performed at the Ars Electronica and Phonotaktik in Austria. Then
there is Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, who has been using atmospherical and
real sounds for years to produce interesting chill out music, where the
chill is more in the meaning of “chills running down your spine”. Most
people might know Hakan Lidbo from his work with Fatboy Slim, but he has
released a whole truckload of records on all different kinds of labels
(Mille Plateaux, Force Inc., and so on). The fourth collaborator is
Si-Cut.DB and with a name like that you might guess that this is not his
only moniker. Among a lot of other stuff he works with Ben Edwards on a
project called “Tennis” which I wouldn’t know anything about due to
its stupid name if it wasn’t for their performance in the
Substance-Pre-Night-Series this summer in Vienna. And they were great.
All four of them are great electronic musicians, who really dug deep into
the means of the Tonne soundtoy and produced very intriguing, sparse tracks
that explore the fine lines between noise and harmonies. There are a lot of
free spaces and lots of echoes in these samples, so there is always a dark
and brooding atmosphere around them with few beats or rhythms to hold on to.
Tonne is the first to use a steady drum-beat for the whole length of a track
on the fourth track of this CD and this one feels more like a heartbeat
heard through putting your head against somebody’s breast, and then he
destroys it with noises and crackling sounds. Due to the narrow
possibilities in creating music with this tool – you have ten samples
where you can set the frequency and a simple “knob” to change the speed
– the artist gains a lot of freedom. Most of the time, there is a lot of
perfection in the easies solution. In the end, this is great late night
listening.
