New-Old Scanner MP3s

Robin Rimbaud, better known as Scanner, is often ahead of the game. Case in point, he’s posted his September update to his website, scannerdot.com, a few days early. Besides summarizing his various art-world activities, he’s substantially expanded the amount of downloadable music in the site’s MP3 section. There’s a ton of new (and new old) material to get through. It’s not entirely clear what’s there for the first time, and what’s been added, but highlights in the “Miscellany” section include a 2005 commission for the BBC (MP3) in which he samples the names of countries, nationalities, organizations and other groups mentioned in a broadcast (it’s like he’s working a mixing-board fader in the newsroom, sounding like an extended, if artful, station-ID tag) and a wistful 2005 remix of a chamber piece by composer Garrick Jones that lays a stately oboe part above pop-tribal percussion and held synth tones (MP3). One tip: after downloading a Scanner MP3, be sure to exit his website, because it has it own soundtrack, a low-level layer of mechanical dread, which plays continuously.