Lost
in Rooms
by Lutz Glandien
ReR Megacorp,
Thornton Heath, UK, 2003
CD-ROM,ReR LG3, £11.50
Distributors
Website: http://www.rermegacorp.com.
Reviewed by Mike Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
The radio personality Ann Arbor, named
after the town where she attended university,
has a show on the Silicon Valley station
KFJC-FM(http://www.kfjc.org) where she
reads twenty minutes of fiction or memoirs
during morning rush hour "because [she]
used to like it when people read to [her]."
Listening to Lutz Glandien's Lost
in Rooms,
this reviewer thought the CD could fit
on her show, not only for its short segments
of spoken memoirs by a man named Daelik.
Ann Arbor also likes Detroit techno, and
over half of Lost
in Rooms
is a collection of danceable musical tracks
with chopped vocals in the mix.
Daelik expounds on "The House" in a monotone
comparable to Bruce Pavitt's recollections
of "Debbie" on the cassette anthology
Sub
Pop 5
(1981). The "Four Bedrooms" slips a beat
behind the voices in a way reminiscent
of another project of that era, David
Byrne and Brian Eno's "My Life in the
Bush of Ghosts". On the Daelik-centered
cuts, Glandien privileges the linear coherence
of the Canadian dancer's tales of house
and home and evoked feelings above all
other sounds. "Tightrope Walker" provides
Daelik some sound effects like a 1930s
radio drama. Yet Glandien works very differently
in adroitly-constructed dance tracks.
On these, rather than sentences, the composer
prefers sampling discarded diphthongs
and fricatives, the small software objects
of spoken language. "Two of My Sisters"
weaves these into a sputtering rhythm
akin to Pink Floyd's "Several Species
of Small Furry Animals Grooving with a
Pict" (1969). Cuts percolate with the
beat of "All the Roads" and the jazzy
dance "Into a Better Room", orlike
the clamorously-climaxing "The Last Room"are
potential soundbeds waiting for texts.
"Like This" is distinguished by Chinese
language samples before it ends with an
accordion or harmonica reverie, while
"And They Sunk" is licked by a whispering,
murmuring voice, distant and far from
shelter.