Scanner
Scanner builds a cinematic collage around the letter A, interweaving twenty-nine record cuts with film dialogue, scanned conversations and broadcast fragments. His own works meet Aphex Twin, Tim Hecker and Alva Noto in a densely layered exploration of sound and narrative.
Listen to the mix
STM 037 is a deliberate and painstakingly fulfilled cinematic type audio collage that investigates variable science-fiction, dramatic and tragic scenarios by invoking expressive musical fragments. Intently selected and crafted subtly powerful records from such gifted musicians as Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Alva Noto, Zoviet France, Aphex Twin and other masters erase boundaries between imagination and reality.
The author of the mix is Robin Rimbaud (born in 1964 in Southfields, London), an electronic musician who works under the name of Scanner due to his use of cell phone and police scanners in live performance. He has released a large amount of critically acclaimed records since early 80s and has curated numerous projects in the field of various arts. Rimbaud can be described as an authoritative figure in the electronic music scene and above it. Our journal could write a book about the Rimbaud’s talent and all the projects so that is why we invite all of you to read more about Rimbaud on the online encyclopedia – Wikipedia.
In the records
STM 037 is an influential musical compilation that is combined from twenty-nine unique record cuts, featuring numerous picturesque audio samples from the classic movies, scanned mobile phone conversations, acapellas, television and radio recordings. Some of them are from the legends such as Peter Gabriel, Freddie Mercury, Richard Long, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Downey Junior, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Don Draper, Adrienne Shelley, Lew Temple and others. Rimbaud hasn’t forgotten to include his own lasting and inspiring creations too. He has chosen an authentic concept for this solid recording: he collected compositions that start with the letter “A”. This compilation also reflects his extremely varied musical taste and influences behind his own musical ideology. There is probably no moment when the musical line is being played solely. The wholeness is formed from many different layers merged together in the very accurate generating, editing and integrating process. The basis holds on the subtly shifting magnificent atmospheres, occasionally enriched with a nostalgic, sometimes hedonistic melodies and blurred rhythmics. Murky rustles, glitched percussions and sudden spoken-word cuts occupy a large part of the fragile top surface. The background is always full of micro-activity and progressively renewing sound shapes and can be interpreted as professional piece of literature with all of its emotional convulsions. It is a high-quality timeless chef d’oeuvre.
STM 037 is like a dynamic Eve Aschheim’s abstract drawing “Lurker” where delusive motion in the desolate hall creates a fictive reality that exists between multiple frameworks. In the theatrical perspective it can be described as a transformed and modernized view to the Gaston Leroux novel “The Phantom of the Opera”. The examination behind the developed musical emotion could lead the intellectual listener to the most unpredictable cellars of subconsciousness.
Also featuring Peter Gabriel, Freddie Mercury, Richard Long, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Downey Junior, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Don Draper, Adrienne Shelley, Lew Temple and others unknown.
Scanner — The Spaces Between Information
Robin Rimbaud on sound, silence and the responsibility of listening: a hospital room, a city, a classroom and the spaces where thought can begin.
Sources and image credits
- Photograph by Tim Kent, August 1999.
- Original release artwork: Scanner — The Magician’s Hat Vol. 1: Ambient.
- Original release artwork: Mountains — Choral.
- Original release artwork: Aphex Twin — Drukqs.