When it comes to avant-garde minimalist electronic composition, one must either live in awe of it or completely fail to understand it. Most people fall into the latter category, and there's probably a good reason why: the uncompromising noise of Karlheinz Stockhausen or Olivier Messiaen hardly sound as good as The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin when you're crusin' for chicks. It's easy to miss the genius of the avant-gardists. Finnish nutcase Erkki Kurenniemi, however, belongs to a category somewhat removed from those anti-classicist pariahs. While Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti spent their careers battling common notions of what comprises "music", Kurenniemi was screwin' around at the University of Helsinki, looking boldly into the future like a musical mad scientist. Kurenniemi could not be satisfied with simple sound textures (which renders this compilation somewhat less fascinating than video evidence of his work). He was busying himself with inventing synthesizers that responded to movements sensed by a video camera, another that generated sounds through skin contact, based on a participant's emotions, developing the first commercial microcomputer, and collaborating with progressive rock band Wigwam. This collection consists of some of his primitive synthesizer experiments from the 1960's, and while it might not be much good as party music, for those interested in the pure science of sound, it's indispensable.
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