[reviews] afe025lcd
bad sector: retrovirus

When I first received a copy of this Bad Sector CD-R, I was pretty much assuming it would be some boring and generic techno. Instead I was met with many layers of powerful noise arranged into powerfully ambient moods.

A quick hunt on information revealed several strange facts on how the music of Bad Sector is created, which I will soon describe. This compilation is basically a collection of old ambient tracks from other recordings that were never put into songs.

The history of Bad Sector is the creation by Massimo Magrini from Tuscany, Italy. Massimo is an expert of musical applications of the Object Oriented paradigm, working in a National Research Council, building hardware and software for computer music.

Using self built analog and digital synthesizers, made from medical, scientific and vintage sound equipment, all combined to create strange sounds that are integrated into the overall dark ambience of Bad Sector.

The music sounds like a mixture of Megaptera with Stratvm Terror, with some songs deep in the noisier explorations while others are clearly mellow ambient works. The 5th track for instance uses samples from a radio meteor scatter, giving the feel of floating in a suit in outer space.

Most of the other tracks use basic layers made on a phasing sequencer, developed on the Atari ST platform in 1994. And the last track was created on a 20 metre long copper wire, played live with a bow as the primary audio signal source.

Bad Sector is apparently even more powerful in the live setting, with Massimo using specially designed motion sensors to transfer his body movements into the tones the music takes, as well as an ancient Russian Geiger counter and a block of Radium to trigger pseudo-rhythmic structures.

Noise and ambience merge perfectly on this release, more so then on some of the other albums I have heard which often do not maintain a consistent feel throughout. This is music to play with a powerful Winamp visualiser at very loud throbbing levels, sure to induce strange emotions.

[Sulphur]