Leander Kahney
Whisper the Songs of Silence
Note: article in a “the cult of mac” section of the magazine
www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,52397,00.html
May. 29, 2002 PT

Music generated on a computer is usually associated with the thumping beats of techno. But a quieter aesthetic is emerging.

"lowercase sound" is the name given to a loose movement in electronic music that emphasizes very quiet sounds and the long, empty silences between them. Created largely by scientists, techies and experimental musicians, lowercase recordings are frequently based on the magnification of minute sounds through a computer, typically a Macintosh.

One recent album was so quiet, listeners wondered whether it actually contained any sound at all. "lowercase resembles what Rilke called 'inconsiderable things' -- the things that one would not ordinarily pay attention to, the details, the subtleties," said Steve Roden, the Los Angeles artist who coined the term. Roden is responsible for an album of paper being handled in various ways. Called "Forms of Paper," the recording was originally commissioned by -– no kidding -– a public library in Hollywood and it has turned into one of the most prominent recordings of the genre.

lowercase recordings are often based on scientific subjects: an amplified anthill, a mobile phone running out of power and the soft pops of bacteria being flash-frozen in dry ice and methanol. Using contact mikes, composers record teeny-weeny noises and amplify them with software such as DigiDesign's Pro Tools. The sounds are then chopped up, looped, stretched, repeated or delayed to create minimalist, near-silent musical compositions. The results demand deep, concentrated listening, but can be surprisingly affecting.

The music is reminiscent of works by John Cage, the minimalist modern classical composer. But unlike Cage's silent composition, "4'33," which caused a scandal during its 1952 première, most lowercase compositions do include sounds.

"It allows you to hear sounds you would not normally pay attention to," explained Josh Russell, a scientist and lowercase musician. "It changes your perception. A lot of sounds now sound musical to me that did not years ago. You become aware that the sounds themselves are beautiful."

Russell, a 31-year-old biochemist from San Diego, runs a leading lowercase record label, Bremsstrahlung Recordings, and has just released a second compilation of lowercase compositions called lowercase Sound 2002. Russell put the first compilation together for members of a lowercase mailing list. He was pleasantly surprised when the 500 copies he made sold out in just two weeks.

The second CD will run to 1,000 copies. It features 28 different artists, almost all from different countries. Between them, the compilations include works by such lowercase luminaries as Roden, Bernhard Günter and Taylor Deupree.

The movement grew up on the Internet and, in fact, wouldn't be possible without it.
" It is so esoteric, it would be very difficult for any city to get a critical mass of people interested in it," Russell said. "But out on the Web, it's easy to. I was going towards this aesthetic for years but I thought I was going crazy. None of my friends enjoyed it. But then I turned to the Web and I found a lot more people turned on by this. I think that's been the case for a lot of people."

lowercase sound hasn't made the racks of Tower or Virgin yet, but there are hundreds of websites devoted to the movement or individual artists, and lots of small, Web-based independent record labels. It is hard to estimate the size of the audience, but Russell said there may be 10,000 lowercase fans around the world.

A recent show at a coffee shop in Santa Monica, California, attracted about 100 people to see three performers, all using Apple PowerBooks. Macs are central to the creation of lowercase sound. Many lowercase artists use field recordings and contact mikes for source material, and they amplify and edit the soft sounds on Macs.

"I would say that along with all the other kinds of electronic music being done these days in home studios and with computers, this work has blossomed tremendously with the relative availability of Pro Tools (especially the free download from DigiDesign), the lower prices of Mac hardware over the last few years and the ability for anyone with any knowledge of computers to simply sit down and make this stuff," Roden said.

"The Mac is the favored platform," said Russell. "Most people who work with computer music use a Macintosh. This grew out of putting powerful computers into the hands of ordinary people: People can create complex scores at home in their front room and put out professional sounding CDs."