Longmo MP3

If you’ve checked out the Buddha Machine and the website of its creators, FM3, then you’ve likely stumbled on the playful “exploded view” of the machine, credited to one Longmo. (More on the Buddha Machine in Monday’s Downstream entry.) Longmo is a musician himself, and his Sanban was recently released on the Leerraum record label. Unlike the mass-produced objet d’sound art that is the Buddha, Sanban is a standard, old-fashioned CD-R, about half an hour in length. The Leerraum website has posted a 10-minute segment (MP3), which is like some wool blanket riddled with little spurs. The blanket is a thick, ruddy expanse of warm noise. The spurs are particles of sound that range from the sorts of beeps that make you think you’ve got new email, to frizzy little stretches of noise, to spazzy gearshifts and garrulous robot chatter. There are also heavily echoed sequences of piano notes that play in between, neither as singular as the blanket, nor as aggressive as the percussive sounds. More info at leerraum.ch and longmo.net.