hen I was a little kid, when I walked into a house, I noticed that I could tell if a TV was on, even if the volume was muted. I didn’t know why. The TV just felt like it was on.

Now I know why. Now I know that the sound of a TV on mute is an ultra high frequency sound. Very high and very low frequency sounds are what make up that most nonexistent of genres, microsound. And when people get together to talk about microsound, which they don’t, the name most often on their lips is Richard Chartier.

This disc is an overview of Richard Chartier’s recent audio releases, with the oldest tracks dating back to 1999. The tracks here are more gristly, clean, glowing drones from his perfect tone collection. This isn’t music you listen to; it’s music that you physically feel. The bass is the comforting smoothness, and the treble is the piercing clarity. This disc is all about clarity. It’s about design.

I’d like to say that there is some connection between Chartier’s music and punk – for most people, playing this CD is grating and disorienting. A friend of mine said that he could make a similar album to this one by setting his tape deck to record and plugging and unplugging a cord into the record input. But then he also enjoys mocking me by tuning his radio to static and saying he’s listening to the 24-hour Merzbow station.

The point is, Chartier’s audio design isn’t for everybody. Did you know that as human ears age, they lose the ability to pick up high pitches? True story. A lot of Chartier’s music is therefore inaudible to people over 60. How punk is that? The answer: 63% punk.

Get into this. This is not the kind of music that Madonna will appropriate for her next commercial foray. You can’t listen to this music when you’re old, so listen to it now. If you’ve never heard of microsound before, get into this. Play this disc in your CD player, leave it on random repeat for a week, at a low volume, until you don’t notice it anymore, until you forget about choruses and verses and bridges, until you forget about melodies organized into patterns. Either do that, or just listen to a tape of yourself plugging and unplugging a patch cord. Chartier’s music will be more entrancing, but both methods will work. When the week is over, you’ll be able to interpret audio as ASCII text, and Chartier’s music will look like this –

……..^* . . …. ………. + ……
……………. =
. .,./
/ *
( ) ( _) _________)(