Rod Cooper
Recordings of Electrical Equipment
VMD08

Tracks:

1. Midi Station, Brussels (2:24)
2. Ticketing Office Foyer, Brussels (1:32)
3. Monitor, Berlin (2:38)
4. Ticket Machine, U-Bahn, Berlin (1:26)
5. Gaming machine, London (1:48)
6. LED Advertisment, CN Tower, Toronto
7. Gaming Machines, London (5:03)
8. Parking Meter, Berlin (1:14)
9. Monitor Bank, Berlin (7:30)
10. Shopping Centre, Toronto (10:34)
11. Tocket Validation, U-Bahn, Berlin (2:52)

Description:

The locations included train stations in Berlin and Brussels. Gaming 
rooms in London. CN tower and shopping mall in Toronto. 
Hours were spent just walking around with headphones listening for what 
each city would emit, randomly stumbling across an edifice or another 
installation of machines saturating the environment with electromagnetic 
activity . 
Sometimes I tried to explain to security that I was only recording the 
electromagnetic waves of the machines and not any sound associated with 
the user interface which breached their so called intellectual copyright 
sanctions. 
I'm sure the engineers of the machines never thought to copyright the 
electromagnetic wave emissions. 
By the time I got to the CN tower in Toronto I had mastered the art of 
getting enough recorded material before being ejected by security. 
London was the most difficult place to record material, usually a minute 
or two would be my longest take.

Reviews:

Don Poe, EAR/Rational Staff Reviewer

These are the electromagnetic waves emitted by machines around Europe and Canada. I like the story on the back of the disc - Rod would get kicked out for doing his recordings but said that there was no copyright on the electromagnetic waves, he wasn't recording the sound, he was recording something at a different frequency than 'sound.' This is a pretty noisey disc - think of the buzz that happens when you turn your car wipers on when and what you hear of that motor when tuned to an AM station. Take that sound and modulate across all sorts of motors and engines. A cool idea and pretty dense and intense sounds.