Review of LDT's "Archive 1998 - 2000" from "Modern Dance Magazine" August 2001
LDT. Archive 1998 - 2000. Electronic Musik.
This is a limited release which features the label's now
deleted Volume
One, plus some extra material recently 'unearthed on a dusty hard
drive'!
Electronic Musik are one of the many new breed of self produced,
financed,
promoted, etc. etc., labels that benefit wholly from the internet.
Indeed,
if it wasn't for the WWW, then this whole new world wouldn't
exist. Not
having heard anything else from LDT, I can only go by this
release. I must
admit it's certainly different! There's thirteen tracks in all,
and it's
mainly a collection of loops, samples and (dare I say) found
sounds, and
yes, it's incredibly appealing. It's that feeling of standing
behind a door
that hasn't been opened before, and holding the key in your hand.
This stuff
is bravely experimental, sharing the same kind of ethics as the
Fflint
Central label. I mean, who would have thought to do a cover of
John Cage's
4' 33''? For those who don't know, this is four minutes and
thirty three
seconds of silence - brilliant! Many of the tracks pull the chaos
trigger of
the imagination, and tracks like Sound #3, When Only Atoms Remain,
Drone #3
(remix) and The Test, send you to places where even dimensions
don't exist.
As with some of the FFC stuff, our language is not equipped to
help me get
across what this stuff is like. I just think it's brilliant that
there's
people out there who're prepared to carry the flag of
experimentation and
can still find, as Charles Fort once wrote, new lands. Uncharted
territory,
the heart of darkness, this stuff is inspired, and inspires. (Dave
W)