Solo For Wounded

A pioneer of the Fluxus movement since the early '60s, Yasunao Tone has committed many sound experiments to vinyl and CD. This work is the second of his experiments on CDs themselves. Like the first of its kind, Music for 2 CD Players (premiered at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation on March 16, 1986), this album is a recording of the sound that results when a CD is altered so that instead of producing the recording it contains, it skips, squeaks, stutters, and otherwise produces error-generated sounds. Yet unlike Music for 2 CD Players, which used a number of original CDs and allowed fragments of the original music to come through, Solo for Wounded CD uses only one prepared CD, a copy of Tone's Musica Iconologos — a work that he claims is excellent for his purposes because its high tone and discordant sound help produce a variety of fascinating sounds. The result is interesting, to a point. The most fascinating things about Tone's work are the ideas behind it: his surrender of control in the music-making process and his lack of desire to communicate specific musical idioms. However, because of these characteristics, the pieces on Solo for Wounded CD lack distinctness and one begins to wonder if their value would be changed if they were half or twice as long as the versions on the album. This is an interesting, one-time experiment, but Tone cannot revisit this project again without significant changes to his method. Otherwise, the results will certainly seem tired and stale.