The sound of the no-input mixer is not so much the ghost in the machine as it is the machine’s central nervous system. That’s part of what John Cage claimed to have heard in his famous encounter with an anechoic chamber: the sound that results when there is no other sound. Peter Kirn of createdigitalmusic.com has helpfully explained the “no-input mixer” approach as utilizing “controlled feedback rather than any other source of sound” and he has quoted Canadian composer Christian Carrière as called it “the sound of the circuits inside the mixer singing.” In the hands of Philadelphia”“based Joo Won Park, the “no-input mixer” is less a matter of singing than full-on, tantrum-level glossolalia, a heavy gurgle of electric fissues. Up above is Park’s “October 1402 (for no-input mixer and computer),” which at times sounds like an arcade game on its last legs, and at others like freakazoid hardcore free jazz improvisation.
The track was originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/joowon. More on Park at joowonpark.net.