pparently, this album emerged from the Frequencies [Hz] Audio-Visual Spaces exhibit in Frankfurt from February to April, 2002. According to the Raster-Noton web site, this collection of 28 two-minute tracks "documents the exhibited artists work with sound in space as a performative enunciation of their practice." Now, I was a graduate student for about seven years (amazingly, I survived with my sense of humor intact), and I know bullshit buzzwords when I read them. There's no greater bullshit academic word than "performative." It's a word that's supposed to explain the concept whereby the person performing an action is aware of his/her performance as performance. In other words, the artists on Frenquencies [Hz] are fully aware of being musicians performing in an artificial environment (be it a concert stage or a CD), and are thus consciously acting like musicians performing in an artificial environment while creating the two-minute songs you, the performative audience, listen to. Yep, that's academia for you.


It's a stupid word, but I think understanding it helps to explain why this album sucks. Here you have 28 tracks from 28 of the finest electronic artists around today—including Pan Sonic, Frank Bretschneider, Merzbow, Monolake, snd, Coh, Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, Random Industries, and 19 more. So far, it sounds pretty good, right? Then add the wrinkle about the time limit for these tracks: two minutes. There are a number of very good albums that have employed the time limit motif—Faalt's Invisible Cities and Raster-Noton's 20' to 2000 come to mind—so the concept of limiting artists to a certain time frame is fine in principle. However, those other two works add another motif to the time one. In the case of Invisible Cities, it was to present five minutes of sound from different places all over the world. In the case of 20' to 2000, it was to record twenty minutes of music that represent the state of electronic music (as defined by the individual artist) at the beginning of the third millennium.


What's the extra motif in Frequencies [Hz] ? Well, as far as I can tell, the motif is that bullshit word, performative. In other words, the artists were all asked to create two minutes of performative music, or music that is self-consciously "music," created by artists who are self-consciously being "artists." Now, I think certain concepts related to this idea of performative serve a useful purpose. I'm a teacher. Sometimes I'll tell a joke and none of my students will laugh, so I'll stop what I'm doing and explain to them that they are students and they need to act like students, and part of being a student consists of pretending to be nice to your teacher—like laughing at his lame jokes. In other words, I was openly discussing the roles of student and teacher while I was teaching. That's the performative concept in action. But how exactly does this work in music? Musicians, by definition, already know they are making music, and people who are listening to music already know they are listening to musicians who are creating music. It's not like musicians need to stand up on stage and proclaim, "I am a musician and I am creating music. You are an audience and you are listening to my music."


So what did the artists on this compilation actually come up with as a performative piece of music? Well, they came up with music that sounds like all the other stuff that these artists are already known for. Pan Sonic's two minutes sound like, well, Pan Sonic: a slow, propulsive beat and some weird noise. Merzbow's track sounds like Merzbow: noise. Snd's sounds like snd: clicks and smooth hooks. The whole album is a sampler of electronic music. That's fine in theory, but two minutes is just too brief for any of these artists to do anything interesting. Instead, we simply get a "highlights" package featuring the most stereotypical elements of each artist's repertoire.


Come to think of it, I guess that's exactly the point behind performative music: music that is self-consciously trying to imitate itself. What better way for an artist to self-consciously create music than to parody his or her own clichés. I suppose, then, that this work does succeed on the performative level as far as the musicians are concerned. But what about the listeners? Are we supposed to also jump for joy and be excited by excised clichés? Give me a break.