Artist: Experimental Audio Research (E.A.R.)
Title: Death of a Robot
Format: 9" Single
Label: Ochre (Nothing to see there, to be honest)
Catalogue Number: OC025
Year of Release: 1998
Ltd Edition of 1000 on black vinyl; 100 on clear. (Mine is the black one)
Tracklisting
A: Death of a Robot (For the Radiophonic Workshop) 6:58
B: Automatic Music (For Oscillator, Ring Modulator & Filter Clusters) 12:13
And so, we snap back to the front of the 10" stack, where resides my only 9" single. I used to own Nine Inch Nails Sin which had an excellent Queen cover on the B-side, but I think I traded it in somewhere back in the 90s. Shame, as it's worth a few quid these days. I mean, not megabucks, but a tenner or so.
Weirdly, someone has uploaded the B-side from this to YouTube:
And this, if you don't know, is a solo-ish project of Pete Kember. Co-founder of Spacemen 3, driving force behind Spectrum, and these days producer to such luminaries as MGMT and Panda Bear. I see there is a new album out soon under his own name, so keeping busy.
Back in 1998 we hear him fiddling around on his own with "Electronic devices: AMS VCS3 & Synthi AKS, Serge Modular Music System, OSCar & Custom Human Voice Synthesiser." The Human Voice thing is only used on the A-side I reckon. It's a lot of bleeps and "Lost in Space"-type sound effects, over a few swells of Tangerine Dream-like synths. It's a bit annoying in parts. Some of the FX wouldn't be out of place in a cartoon, where one character hits the other character over the head with something heavy, and they look dazed whilst small yellow birds fly around their head. It ends with a kind of digitised-blocked-drain.
The flip side is much easier in the ear. Guessing here, and you can listen above, but the Automatic Music title might just be a nod to some of Eno's methods for generative music in the mid-to-late 1970s, where you set up some rules for the equipment, or loops of different lengths, and then just let the programme run and see what you get. I think he moved this to computer programming in the 90s with albums like Neroli. Anyway, whilst the ring modulator dominates this piece, it builds slowly and non-threateningly to a satisfying end.
Maybe it's not so weird that someone uploaded the B-side after all, it is the better of the two.