Corey Larkin – Raw Data Studies (Copy For Your Records, 2011)

Corey Larkin has a history of making intense & not so easily accessible electronic music. As I’m sure you might expect from the title, Raw Data Studies is more of those wonderful sound experiments.

There’s only 2 tracks, the first is a mere 35 seconds long. It’s a quick brittle static blast sourced from a PDF file. The second, titled “Dissipative Music/ µũ Law Algorithm,” is wayy longer, clocking in at 15 minutes. This is some HARSH shit. Abrasive squelches, piercing glass & blade tornadoes, lo-fi robot blurts, and ghostly electronic chatter, this runs the gamut on cold, inhumane, & antiseptic noise. It’s like dipping your amputated limbs in Clorox.

I’m not entirely sure how these sounds are made. They’re primitive & digital and my guess is Larkin is using some traditionally non-audio data to make noise, similar to Steven Flato’s transformation of “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” .txt to an .aif (Larkin even thanks Flato for “directing me to the medium of raw data” on the disc). This isn’t easy listening, this isn’t even pleasurable listening, it’s startling & painful but goddamn if I’m not still drawn to it. It’s not just the intrigue of the creation, it’s actually a varied & compelling experience, one that I probably won’t listen to on a daily basis but will no doubt peel away at its layers and get more out of it with every listen.

This is the first of four releases in Copy For Your Records‘ Fan CD-R Series. They’ll all be a 3″ inside a 5″ CD-R, limited to “no less than 100 copies, and cumulatively, as a complete series, totalling an edition of 500.” Strange, but whatever. This is totally fucking rad, major props to CFYR for getting brilliant future-noise glitch in the physical hands of those who care.