NOVO LINE

LIVE AUS DER SPIELOTHEK

Killer “Algorithmic Body Music” from the canny cat behind that "For Promotional Use Only" 12" on Diagonal!

Not Waving’s Ecstatic label grip a bendy-as-f**k live recording of (deep breath) “alternatively-tuned polyphonic multi-rhythmic live-mixed live-generated parameter based unrendered unsequenced spontaneous improvised electronic music” performed (?) by Novo Line at Berlin’s Sameheads club night in December, 2015.

Using a software program on a 720kb floppy written in 1988, run on two x Atari ST PCs using only era-consistent hardware FM synthesis via MIDI, it’s nothing if not authentically retro, but also proves there’s latent, vital life in outmoded gear, provided you’re willing to look hard enough. 

Like his aforementioned For Promotional Use Only 12”, everything’s yoked to a mesmerisingly sluggish pace, which is perhaps necessary as the spiky, curdling, and discordant sequence of events carries so much repetitive - yet subtly morphing - information that it may be genuinely psychotomimetic at higher tempos.

To be honest, we’re a bit baffled at mention of his current actions “reflecting research in the fringe fields of electrical theory with relation to pythagorean tuning systems”, but it should prompt some interesting wikipedia mooches later on.

Ultimately, it sounds like something hypothesised by boffins at IPEM’s secret darkrooms circa ’88, and that cannot be a bad thing in any freak's estimations.

Tracklisting

1. Part 1    22:42
2. Part 2    21:41