Chop Shop :: Oxide

Chop Shop
Oxide
23five012

REVIEWS:

Brainwashed.com
May 4, 2008

     The inevitable fallibility of magnetic media can, while being frustrating as all hell to an artist, provide the impetus for an even better creation. Oxide represents such a creative disaster: old cassettes and reels of tape had been accidentally subjected to moisture damage. Instead of tossing them, Scott Konzelmann strung them up and pulled what he could off of the decaying tape and built this new work out of the remnants in his first full length release in quite awhile.
     The structure of the single 49 minute track alone is a metaphor for the fickle nature of magnetic tape: it has a very cut & paste quality, but without the per-sample perfection of digital audio editing tools. Instead, it feels raw and unpolished, like art based on rotting audiotape should. The rough structure is only amplified by the actual sounds that lie within it. Sonically it is a rather noisy work, sounds resembling machinery rattles, amplified sandpaper, abrasive textures, etc.
      It is jarring at times, listening to what may simply be amplified and processed tape hiss requires careful attention to hear subtleties before the listener is slapped in the face by a raw blast of pure audio sludge. From the sound of things, it doesn't sound like a great deal of processing was used to the original raw material, since it sill retains such an unaffected, analog quality. The original sounds were based around Konzelmann’s traditional approach to music: utilizing various junkyard sonic installations to create a veritable Sanford and Son noise orchestra. However, the decay of tape makes this less relevant but doesn't hamper the artistic quality of the work.
      The actual sound of decay that is presented here is by far its strongest asset: the listener can practically hear the creases in the tape, pieces of magnetic oxide that may have flaked off due to environmental damage, mold blocking the tape heads, etc. Often, the minimal nature of the damage is fascinating: the sub-bass hum and crackle at around the 17 minute mark are among the most compelling audio textures I've heard in material like this. The parts that are more dissonant rank up there with the best of the analog noise kings, before folks like Merzbow traded in their junk gear for Powerbooks.
      The overarching analog sound of this work is what makes it stand on its own amongst its peers. No matter how complex one can make a Max/MSP patch, or how many modules one can load into Reaktor, getting textures and sounds like are found here simply isn't the same. Perhaps the most adept artists could model sounds like this, but I'm skeptical that it would retain the same warmth and fascinating microcosmic worlds that are here. An abstract, occasionally violent, but undeniably amazing collection of accidental textures and sounds. -- Creaig Dunton

Vital Weekly
Number 625, April 29, 2008

This filled me with much pleasure, as I never expected this. Towards the end of the 80s and in the early 90s, when we were still firm industrial music lovers, Chop Shop was one of our heroes. Not because he was so incredible loud, but his loudspeaker installations looked raw and sounded good. No, actually they sounded 'rusty', as well as a rusty look. Through his speaker installations Chop Shop, the one man band of Scott Konzelmann fed a blend of decayed sounds, taken from all sorts of machinery, sonic residue taped on cheap cassette tape or reel to reel tape machines. Much more serious in his approach than the average noise maker, Konzelmann was already more a visual artist than a musician. I have no idea why he 'left' the scene, or why we didn't hear his name that much in the last ten years, but it's good to hear Oxide. Salvaged from old, damaged tapes, which caused 'flaking, static, dropouts and print through'. If you never saw or heard a cassette or a reel tape - and in these digital days that is probably a lot of people - it's hard to understand what static or dropouts are. Listening to Oxide is a like being transported back in time, to the era of cassettes, hiss, when the music dropped a bit due to an imperfection of the cassette tape. Konzelmann takes all of these sounds, of pure hiss, of loud machine noise, of decay, of erosion and creates his Oxide piece with it. He deliberately leaves in the 'unwanted' breaks, the mistakes and the faults, but his piece is, at least for me who heard pretty much everything of his 'old' music, a true delight. Great to see this on CD and becoming more easy to access, but surely its time to out some of the older releases and have a nostalgic evening of humming noise. -- Frans de Waard