COMPILATION
UNDER THE NAME OF Algojo)(Algojo
CURATED BY Christof Migone
Ohm Éditions, Avatar, 1997
Of all the strange experimental releases out there, Compost (and its follow-up Compost 2) is one of the strangest. This oddly-shaped disc contains 30 one-minute tracks, but “Compost” really is one 30-minute piece (incidentally, track changes are arbitrary). The CD is presented without names or copyright. One can only assume that collaborators to the project are the usual suspects of the Québec City audio art collective Avatar: Jocelyn Robert, Christof Migone, Chantal Dumas, Pierre-André Arcand, maybe even Gregory Whitehead, Fabrice Montal and the famous Algojo)(Algojo . Audio garbage, aborted projects, and snippets that were left to rot in the bottom drawer have been combined in an ode to sound recycling. One can recognize bits of Arcand’s machina riccordi (a loop recording device) experiments, TV broadcasts (in French and English), and Dave Brubeck on hurdy-gurdy. This theater of the absurd doesn’t make much sense, but it provides an enjoyably deranged experience.