From the January 16, 2061 Chicago Reader, Critic's Choice

In the late 90s TV Pow frequently performed their minimal, gestural sound art with nothing but laptops--I nearly forgot that Michael Hartman and Brent Gutzeit, who founded the band while living in Japan in 1995, started out playing real drums and electric bass. But the trio's brand-new album, TV Pow Presents Michael Hartman, Todd A. Carter, and Brent Gutzeit as TV Pow (Southport), makes it unequivocally clear that they see the computer as just one tool among many. It's their most beautiful and focused effort, with five lengthy, quiet pieces that dissolve between evocative field recordings and multitracked layers of minimalist, abstract group improvisation on acoustic piano, guitar, and drums, which are played with brushes or soft mallets instead of sticks; there are even some vocals. It's nowhere near as heavily edited as many of their earlier discs, and laptop noise is present only as an undercurrent. "The International Brigade," for example, combines Satie-esque piano miniatures, serene and distant-sounding street recordings, muffled electronic hums and flutters, and the gentle rustling and chiming of what might be a string of bells held very close to a microphone. On much of the album they sound like a less glacial AMM—though none of them can play piano or percussion like John Tilbury and Eddie Prevost, they've got keen ears for the tiniest of details and a strong collective instinct for organizing sounds on the fly. For this program, entitled "Celebrating 11 Years of Good Decisions," the group will use laptops and live acoustic and electric instrumentation with a four-channel surround-sound system and two independent subwoofers, which will handle output from the band as well as from what Carter calls "real-time/life sound sources from the immediate and surrounding environments"--that is, mikes outside on the sidewalk.

—Peter Margasak

Its name reminds us of a word balloon from a 1960s Roy Lichtenstein canvas, or maybe a Japanese punk band. And, hey—when it comes to this fearless electro-acoustic trio, we’re not that far off. Indeed, the group was founded in Japan, when Michigan natives and recent college grads Michael Hartman and Brent Gutzeit were kicking around Tokyo a decade ago, making lo-fi cassette tapes in their apartment. The former’s background in audio and the latter’s training in sculpture proved appropriate for an outfit whose sonic constructions prompted England’s The Wire to rhapsodize: “What you’re hearing is buildings being moved through the air by magic. There is a quality of hovering sound and massiveness to the proceedings that is incredibly compelling.”

Yet the outfit—which also features fellow childhood friend Todd Carter, a sound engineer by profession—is forever in flux. Its Chicago date deploys the full range of its techniques and weirdness: The show is billed, with a bit of tongue in cheek, as “Celebrating 11 Years of Good Decisions.” Though generally perceived as a bunch of laptop seditionaries, TV Pow is more expansive and versatile than your average glitch guerrillas. One set will sport acoustic instruments (percussion, piano and a homemade 20-string bass). The other set will take advantage of the venue’s surround-sound system to create improvised mayhem using field recordings, live samples and “broken electronics.”

And the name? It comes from a 1970s cartoon show that encouraged kids to yell, “Pow! Pow! Pow!,” at the TV set. Perfect.—Steve Dollar

The most influential new instrument in jazz doesn't have a mouthpiece or a reed, a set of strings or a pair of sticks.

Small, sleek and portable, it can produce a galaxy of sounds with a mere keystroke, enabling the smallest jazz combo -- or even a soloist -- to create an exquisitely shimmering, other-worldly music.

Which explains why musicians as significant as pianist Herbie Hancock, trumpeter Dave Douglas, saxophonist Ken Vandermark, pianist Matthew Shipp and other free-thinkers have made the laptop integral to much of their work. Whether operating the computer themselves or engaging technicians to help them program it, today's most visionary jazz artists have embraced laptops, Apple PowerBooks and other computer technologies, thereby redefining the sound of jazz in the 21st Century.

"The computer literally inches toward the infinite," says Shipp, in explaining his passion for the new technology, which made possible his breakthrough recordings "Nu Bop" (on Thirsty Ear in 2002) and "Harmony & Abyss" (the same label in 2004).

"The computer is just so plastic, it can produce so many sounds," adds Shipp. "When you apply the human will and imagination to it, the electronics allow you to approach an unending range of possibilities."

The proof lies in the work itself. In Shipp's meticulously produced CDs, and in select performances, he has created sonic palettes so lush and finely textured that they would have been inconceivable in standard jazz instrumentation. By contrast, even the electric synthesizers of an earlier era -- though capable of producing alluring sounds of their own -- cannot match the breadth of sonic expression that Shipp and his colleagues routinely achieve.

Random rhythmic ideas

Or consider the work of Douglas. The gauzy textures, extremely high- and low-end frequencies, seemingly random rhythmic ideas and other blips and bleeps that the Apple PowerBook produced on his "Witness" CD (on RCA in 2001) represented something genuinely new under the (digital) sun. To hear Douglas' characteristically lyric trumpet solos set against this exotic, celestial backdrop was to attain new appreciation for the trumpeter's work and the clarity of his vision.

Yet Douglas is quick to point out that achieving an acoustic-electronic sonic fabric as seamless as he did on "Witness" and his more recent "Keystone" (2005 on Greenleaf Music) involves a lot more than punching the "enter" key on a computer.

"You don't just write the tunes and go, `OK, now how can I get the electronics on it?'" says Douglas. "The idea is more on how to make an electronic soundscape that includes these tunes.

"I also figured out a way not to lose the sense of a group of musicians playing together. That has been really important to me. I think that's something that gets lost in translation sometimes."

Few musicians have been more successful in merging the acoustic and computer-generated idioms than saxophonist Vandermark, who has collaborated with such Chicago innovators as Kevin Drumm and Jim Baker, each finding ways of balancing their electronics work against the reed and brass players who perform alongside Vandermark. By tapping Drumm's ultra-high-tech computer programs and Baker's old-world synthesizers, Vandermark effectively has bridged several eras in jazz experimentation.

So far as Baker is concerned, electronics have altered forever the meaning of jazz improvisation and composition.

"The whole notion, for example, of a jazz rhythm section has been transformed," says Baker.

"According to jazz tradition, it was piano, bass and drums that kept time. Now those tasks can be reassigned to sequencers, laptops, synthesizers, whatever.

"That means jazz has been changed, significantly."

You don't need to listen much further than the convention-shattering Chicago group TV Pow, which in some occasions amounts to a laptop trio, each of its players manipulating the keypad the way a piano virtuoso might finesse a Steinway. Though TV Pow players also often double on more traditional instruments, their laptop jam sessions represent a new frontier in jazz improv.

Even so, TV Pow's Todd Carter insists that he and his colleagues -- Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman -- come a lot closer to jazz tradition than some listeners may realize.

"Playing the laptop is really like playing any musical instrument -- if you practice enough, it comes faster," he says.

Opposite of anarchic

And though casual audiences might think that the buzzes, and drones and oscillating pitches that Carter and friends produce are anarchic, the opposite is true.

"If anything," says Carter, "the laptop makes you focus on organization. You have to know where [in the computer] the sound is to be able to get at it, and you have to memorize where it is if you want to call it up instantly."

It's worth noting, also, that computer sound has become a lot more prevalent in jazz than some listeners may realize. Often, when a trumpeter puts his horn to his lips and produces a quivering tone or an outrageously bent pitch, he's using a foot-pedal to process his acoustic sound through a computer somewhere onstage or off.

Not that the idea of switched-on jazz per se is particularly new. Sun Ra flirted with plugged-in experiments in the 1950s, Bill Evans played electric keyboard in the '70s and all sorts of commercially driven experiments tilted the music toward a jazz-rock fusion during that era.

But today, the digital age has exponentially increased a musician's options, as well as his challenges.

As Douglas notes, "The machine doesn't solve the eternal question of how to make great work."

TV Pow's dense vocabulary of clicks, buzzes, and feedback hums traverses the boundaries separating music and noise, but even at its most abrasive, the interplay between the three core members is remarkably subtle and complex, reflecting the group's wide range of musical interests, including Otomo Yoshihide, Morton Feldman, and minimal techno. The intricate nature of the music sets the band apart from most improvisers who work with electronics.

Hartman explains the methods that group uses to keep things together are quite simple. "It's pretty much improvised," he says by phone from Chicago, "Although we have done stuff with scores, but these are always graphic scores. Often what we'll do is that we'll begin with an initial idea, such as starting off with a particular sound, and then we'll sketch it out, usually with a particular beginning or end in mind. But otherwise it's all improvised. We also just talk to each while playing, especially when we're playing electronics."

Over its 10-year existence, the group has experimented with a number of instruments _ traditional and homemade, acoustic and electronic, digital and analog. For a time, the three relied heavily on laptops in their performances, but the trio's evolution has been such that, as Hartman sees it, "its come full circle", again favoring an instrumental hodgepodge. At the time of our conversation, TV Pow was in the midst of preparing for a short tour of the U.S. with Viennese musician and sometimes fourth member, Boris Hauf.

"I'll bring my laptop and a small drum kit and Brent will bring one of his instruments," Says Hartman. "He's been using this instrument that he calls the 18-string bass, which is basically a section of pipe which has piano strings attached to it. Todd will probably bring a computer, and we'll also have acoustic guitar."
Beyond TV Pow, Carter, Gutzeit, and Hartman are now also in the back-up band for singer-songwriter Sherry Diaz, playing melancholy, vaguely country-influenced music. "We're all kind of excited about it," Hartman says with a laugh. "Because it's the first likeable band any of us has ever been in."

 Interview from the Kalamazoo Gazette, March 25, 2005 by Mark Wedel

   The enigmatic electro-acoustic band TV Pow will return to its old stomping grounds of Kalamazoo when it plays at Kraftbrau Brewery on Sunday. It will be joined by saxophonist Boris Hauf, of Vienna, Austria.
   It's really difficult to pinpoint from where TV POW came and where it belongs. Western Michigan University grads Michael Hartman and Brent Gutzeit found themselves in Tokyo in 1995, when they formed TV POW Laptop computers became their main instruments, since it was all they could transport on the city's subways. (huh?? -ed)
   After a few months playing in the Japan, they returned to Kalamazoo, and Todd Carter joined the band. In 1996, the group moved to the active and open improvisational scene of Chicago, where the still reside. Hauf occasionally joins the band when he's not in Europe with his own group, Efzeg. The four are also part of a larger experimental Chicago group, Television Power Electric, with Japan's Otomo Yoshihide.
   TV Pow plays "freeform, free-improv, electro-acoustic music," Carter said , speaking form a cell phone on the road to Muncie, Ind. It changes with every concert, he said. Sometimes it's just the trio playing sounds through laptop computers.
   They'll use other instruments at Sunday's show, with Gutzeit on a 20-string bass that he built; Hartman on drums, and Hauf on sax.
   "We always do a different show every time because we get easily bored." Carter said. "That keeps it exciting for everybody else."
   On its current tour through the Midwest, the band sometimes has no idea what to do, "and then Boris just starts wailing." Carter said.
   "Sometimes we're really quiet, sometimes we're crazy noise." Carter said.
   The group has 14 recordings, with albums on indie labels Gentle Giant Records and Box Media, plus CDs they've burned themselves and MP3s available at www.tu-m.com.
   TV POW made the Critic's Choice list in the Sept. 7, 2001, issue of the Chicago Reader; an alternative newspaper: TV POW "has always leaned toward the amorphous, testing the boundaries of what can be considered music," the paper wrote. Of their CDs "Being Nice is Funny" and "Despite Ourselves," the Reader wrote: "A casual listener could mistake either of these CDs for a broken amplifier left turned on in the corner; but close listening reveals a multitude of well-crafted details."
   TV POW, which has also toured Japan and Europe, gets varied audience reaction at its shows. Of an all-ages show the band played last week, Carter said, "I think there were a few kids who didn't know what to expect, but they were really interested in hearing more stuff afterwards."
   TV POW shows aren't easy for mainstream audiences to enjoy, he admitted.
   "We've got complaints in the past (about) how uninteresting it is to watch," Carter said. "We don't really care about conventions in the whole performance thing."
Some experimental bands, like the opener for Sunday's show, Kalamazoo's Dr.Xeron and the Moogulators, will wear costumes, use props and fog machines.
"We make fun of costume bands. We don't like to dress up," Carter said.
   "I don't want to cause some kind of battle here, East Coast ?West Coast, costume/no costumes," Carter said jokingly.
   TV POW just wants to make noise. Why?
   Because we have to," Carter said.

http://www.tvpow.net/

+ Whats kind of instruments or technology did/do you use in 1995 and now? Are there any change about your aesthetics/thinking/way of making sounds according to technologys? What kinds of your aethetics/thinking/way of making sounds does not change?

1995 tc - CD, Sampler, Turntable, DJ Mixer, Cassette, open reel
2003 tc - laptop, sampler, cd, canjo, piano
1995 mh - drums/percussion, sampler, cd, DAT
2003 mh - laptop, drums/percussion, piano
1995 bg - bass, tapes, cd
2003 bg - laptop, cds, tone generator, the fisher, piano,

tc - our aesthetics/thinking/way of making sounds is usually non-dependent on current technology, thinking of some fictional equipment or software that doesn't exist, but should; Since we approach the instruments and electronics in this mind frame, using only what we have, it's more about the sound than allowing the technology to limit us. Although, It would be harder to make this music 100 hundred years ago w steam driven punch card daguerrotype machines.

mh - In TV Pow, our way thinking has always been that any sound or instrument can be acceptable, as long as it sounds good. So our way of thinking about what we do hasn't really changed since we started working together. Now there is more affordable technology that allows us to do some things that we wished we could have done 5 or 10 years ago, but I think it's always been more of a financial barrier than a technological barrier. New and different forms of technology can influence your ideas and the outcome, but for us, sound has always been more important than technology. None of us were ever really hardcore computer guys, and we really don't spend much time writing patches and things, so more than anything, technology has just made it more convenient. Especially in terms of reducing the number of machines needed to play live and make tracks. I don't need to carry around as much stuff as I used to.

+ Please tell us about your attitude/thinking about fieldrecording, sound environment in usual life and concert space.
tc - Concert space can be more controlled, creating new sound spaces which can mirror "usual life" seemingly taking you to a newly created environment. we try to make our sounds dynamic like "usual life", more so than most recorded and performed music/sound.

mh - Many people appreciate the sounds that are happening around them, but there are also many people that will only listen closely and appreciate the sounds of the "field" after it has been recorded and is being played back at them through speakers. We belong to the former group, so we try to record and use the sounds that we enjoy. Bringing these sounds into the concert space forces people to listen to their environment as music, rather than background noise.

+ Do you practice in some way? Do you think you need the practice for your improvisation?
tc - we practice in some ways, mostly by listening and thinking; just making sure the instruments are still working properly, run them though their paces, more of a sound check, than practice. You can't practice for improvisation, but we think that it's ok to talk about improv before and during the performance. my typing and hand-eye coordination are always improving, not through practice, but execution of muscle memory. same w music.

mh - If you improvise and there no audience around to hear it, does that mean you are practicing? I think we'd rather just play than practice, but I still practice things that require some physical coordination, like playing the drums or doing a cross fade with the windows mixer...

+ Please tell us your experiences and memories in Japan. What do you think about the music culture in Japan?
mh - Japan is a very unique place and I think some very unique art and music has come from there. I don't think musicians like Otomo Yoshihide, Masami Akita, Yamatsuka Eye, Sachiko M, and Toshimaru Nakamura could have come from anywhere other than Japan. It's hard to put into words, but I think anyone familiar with Japanese culture can understand. I know it's dangerous to make broad sweeping statements about people and cultures, but I think Japanese people tend to take things to further extremes than most Europeans and North Americans, and the music culture is no exception. Some examples are the noise music (often accompanied with bondage imagery and performance) of the 80's and 90's, and now what seems to be a move towards simplification and quite, like the non-playing style of Taku Sugimoto. Even Japanese pop (J-Pop) is extremely commercial and pop... I see it in Japanese fashion (ganguro/monster girls), and film (anime and the films of Takeshi Miike come to mind). I see it in other aspects of Japanese culture as well.

For me, living in and visiting Japan has provided some invaluable experiences, both musically and personally. Meeting and playing with people like Otomo Yoshihide, Tetuzi Akiyama, Tsunoda Tsuguto, and Taku Sugimoto really helped to shape my ideas about improvisation, composition, and sound in general. I also met my wife while living in Japan, which I'm very grateful for.

Interview from Crouton Music:
How did TV Pow form?
TV Pow: We all new each other and played in various groups in Kalamazoo, Michigan since around 1993. Brent and Mike moved to Tokyo for a while. While in Tokyo they made some lo-fi room recordings and called it TV Pow, because they thought it was a great name for a dumb band. They knew that when they got back to the states they needed Todd. It just was that way. We all spent a summer in Kalamazoo, MI trying to revive some old groups (see below), back to Japan again for a while, then to Chicago where we stayed in a dirty loft on South Michigan Ave and just kept going...CM: What was the initial instigation to work together - what did you know about each other that made it make sense? TVP: We worked in a few other group(ing)s together, a terrible jam band called the young republicans, a noise rock group called pencil neck and an avant ambient group called liminal. The three of us were the only ones that survived these bands, and we were the only ones we knew at the time in Kalamazoo, mi interested in playing improvised, noise, and/or ambient music, which came from our inability to remember parts. We spent the better portion of a year staying up all night, smoking pot, and listening to recordings of each other singing Michael McDonald songs. We realized that we had the magical combination of diversified and overlapping talents and interests, bad attitudes, and grouchiness. Of course once we moved to Chicago we found lots of other musicians with similar interests that like to improvise. CM: What are your instruments and why? TVP: Anything that makes sound, because there are millions of possibilities. We often use computers to edit, organize, and play them back at you. However more and more we have been moving back towards using acoustic instruments such as drums, piano, guitar, and canjo. Brent also has several instruments that he built and/or found. CM: Do you think your music is a reaction or based on an initial idea?
TVP: It's not really a reaction to anything in particular except maybe boredom. We never spend too much time talking about concepts or philosophizing about this or that. We just want to explore sound possibilities and create sounds and spaces that are interesting for us. We definitely have an idea of what we agree on, we just don't feel the need to talk about it. We firmly believe in the concept of 'don't talk, play', because by the time you've discussed it, you could have played it. CM: How do you see your work accepted in different countries, and what are your thoughts on different culture's perceptions of different art forms in general? TVP: We've been to Europe and Japan where people seem to be a little more open to different forms of "avant garde" music, perhaps because they have more of a tradition in "the arts". Our travels have definitely opened us up to new sounds...perhaps people want to see this music played by road-weary Americans...we really don't know... CM: What music did you listen to as children and how do you think that reflects what you do now? TVP: Some of our first records were Bee Gees Greatest Hits, K-tel Dumb Dittes, Kiss Alive (I and II), J Geils Freeze Frame, Bob Seger (everything)... None of which have much of anything to do with what we do now, (except maybe dumb ditties). We were immersed in an environment of rock and mo-town. Maybe it is what lead to getting burned out on popular rock music early on and searching for something else. We are still suckers for a really good pop song though. CM: Talk about the name 'TV Pow'. TVP: When we were growing up in Michigan there was an after school cartoon show called TV Pow (it was in other parts of the country too). They would play cartoons and between the cartoons they would play a video game over the TV. It was like the Magnavox version of space invaders or some shit. Kids would call in and say "POW" and someone at the TV station would hit the fire button and kids would win prizes. Of course everyone would call up and say "POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW!" as fast as they could, but the guy at the station would just hold the button down or something and wouldn't even POW! it. We can't believe we actually watched other people play video games over the phone on TV, but we did, every day. CM: How much does the work of the group change from your individual recordings (concept, approach, etc.)? TVP: Not much and a whole lot. The technical aspect is very similar (collecting, recording, mixing, editing), but we all use sounds and ideas that we wouldn't normally use in TV Pow...of course it's not uncommon for a snippet of someone's solo work to sneak it's way into a performance. We'd be curious to hear from someone else what they think the differences are. We do think that we influence each other and tend to take from each other in our solo work...and in TV Pow. CM: What happens next? TVP: Fresh new studio recordings with more acoustic instruments and less electronics. A TV Pow boxed set from the label Bottrop Boy www.bottrop-boy.com, with 2 or 3 cds of remixes by lots of very famous people and some new material. A split 12" with west coast noise outfit John Wiese and Tim Koh. An 8" square lathe cut record with Gene Coleman from the Japanese label/pale disc http://www.lethe-voice.com/kk/pale/index.html . An MP3 for the Antiopic Allegorical Power Series www.antiopic.com. And a short track on an anti-war/protest CD Compilation from Japan. We also have some recordings with Boris Hauf, are working hard on our second 50 CDR spindle set, and we have lots of other unreleased stuff if anyone is interested...contact us via www.tvpow.net.

From the April 11 to May 08, 2002 issue of UR Chicago, Chicago Sounds Local 232
WHO ARE YOU?: Michael Hartman, Brent Gutzeit, and Todd A. Carter HOW DID THE BAND GET STARTED?Brent and Mike were living in Tokyo doing their thing and when they got back to the States, Todd hopped aboard and pow! HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN TOGETHER? Since 1995 DESCRIBE YOUR SOUND IN TEN WORDS OR LESS WITHOUT USING THE LETTER "E": Unform sound WHAT ARE YOUR CURRENT PORJECTS? Black Dot (Mike's solo project) Wheaton Research (Brent's solo porject), Aerospace Soundwise (Todd's solo porject) All these projects are our outlets for doing music that doesn't quite fit into TV Pow. WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE GOALS? Space Sound - making music and recording in space (didn't one of the Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC guys just do that?) WHY CHICAGO? The Great Lakes WHERE CAN WE FIND YOU CHILLIN' LIKE TV VILLAINS? on the couch/floor IF YOUR MAGIC CARPET BROKE DOWN ON A DESERT ISLAND, WHAT FIVE ALBUMS WOULD YOU BE STUCK WITH? Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Halfer Trio's Kill the King, Dr Dre's Chronic 2001, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, and Otomo Yoshihide's Sound Factory WHAT'S BEEN YOUR WORST MOMENT AS A BAND? We can't pick just one, but it usually involves us on tour being lost, hungry, and arguing over which way to go WHAT LOCAL BANDS DESERVE BIG UPS? Kevin Drumm, Town & Country, Tym Jones, Thymme Jones WHERE CAN WE FIND YOU NEXT? April 18 at the Museum of Contemporary Art for "Version 02".

From the September 7, 2001 Chicago Reader, Critic's Choice
As TV Pow, the trio of Brent Gutzeit, Todd Carter, and Michael Hartman has always leaned toward the amorphous, testing the boundaries of what can be considered music. In the past this local group has electronically manipulated sounds from a variety of instruments - electric koto, drums, a 20-string steel "bass" - but on more recent stuff they've graduated to laptops and minidiscs. Computer musicians are everywhere these days, but TV Pow doesn't sound interchangeable with any of those other Powerbook jockeys; it's minimal approach, focusing on tiny improvised gestures and pure, almost nonmusical waveforms, can create the impression that you're somehow listening to the imperceptible electromagnetic disturbances propagating through the room. On it two latest releases - Being Nice Is Funny (Mort aux Vaches) and Despite Ourselves (forthcoming on Fire Inc., the label operated by TV Pow's sometime collaborators in the Icelandic group Stilluppsteypa) - the trio introduces splatters of white noise, abrasive crackles, and hollow ticks and pops over a steady high-frequency hum. That hum might drive a dog crazy, but it can also be strangely comforting: like a painter's canvas, it provides a background for the other sounds to play over, a sort of aural surface instead of the void of digital black. Despite Ourselves also incorporates urban environmental recordings into it's electronic soundscapes, a new direction for the group. A casual listener could mistake either of these CDs for a broken amplifier left turned on in the corner, but close listening reveals a multitude of well-crafted details.

TV Pow Presents Michael Hartman, Todd A. Carter, and Brent Gutzeit as TV Pow (CD from Southport Records)

from Dusted Magazine
TV Pow are often characterized as a laptop trio, and they've oft played in that guise. But in truth, the Chicago-based ensemble has never been purely electronic; from the beginning they've used homemade instruments such as the canjo (a stand-up stringed instrument made from a repurposed Hershey's chocolate syrup can) and good old-fashioned drums and guitars, and their most important assets – restless intelligence and intransigent attitude – require no power strips. Still, it's a quite shocker to find them using a very nice, in-tune piano from an audiophile studio, and virtually incomprehensible that this record's been released by a label whose website trumpets itself as a source of “Real jazz made in Chicago.” Willie Pickens this is not.
    “The International Brigade” opens the disc in a sort of chops-challenged AMM mode, with stately chords trudging across a surface of groaning scraped drumheads. Within two minutes flickering electronic tones and swooshing traffic noise ease onto the scene, like cutout magazine photographs of fruit surreptitiously tucked into a hyper-realist still life painting. It's all quite lovely, and the tinkle of bells raises the question; are TV Pow mocking the beauty they've created, or inviting us to meditate upon it? Or both? The next piece, “Maybe It's The Alternator,” foregrounds its electronic effects more, contrasting unnaturally elongated bell tones and digital pops with more moody piano. It also features some lonely guitar plucking that somehow makes me ponder the irony that Chicago, once the home of the blues, is now the host to a legendarily ineffective recycling program in which you mix certain categories of refuse together in blue plastic bags, which sometimes show up in landfills. TV Pow do the opposite; instead of bogus salvage, they authentically reuse field recordings to set these pristine-sounding acoustic ramblings within a grimier world, albeit a much less ear-scouring one than they routinely muster when the piano lid is down and the laptop lids are up.
    The album closes with a laptop-free live set that transpired at Chicago's Spareroom venue in October 2003. The album's cover, which shows Hartman drumming with his face to the back of the hall and Gutzeit stretched out on the floor (he's credited with “sleep” and yes, I've seen him nod off at a gig), gives you some idea of the absurdity that transpired. But the track holds up as an audio experience, one in which episodes of tragically droning organ slide into sparse, clattering metallic mobiles that twist and shimmer and clang like a partially gutted lunar module left hanging in a ruined, roofless Smithsonian of the distant future. The sirens and street noise that punctuate many performances I've heard at this venue make a couple appearances, jostling for space with the band's own rude coughing. TV Pow use a dose of snotty surrealism to keep it really real. (Bill Meyer)

from AllMusic.com
This album should be celebrated as a comeback. After all, it has been years since TV Pow's last release of a manufactured CD, and quite some time since their last release period (if one excludes the 2004 CD-R by Television Power Electric, a slightly different project). And the title (in full: TV Pow Presents Michael Hartman, Todd A. Carter and Brent Gutzeit as TV Pow), as tongue-in-cheek as it can be, makes sense. It provides reassurance that this is indeed TV Pow -- on first listen, you might be tempted to doubt it. First of all, although computers still play a key role in the trio's sound, physical instruments abound: piano, guitar, organ, drum set, and various percussion (that is, if you believe the credits; after all, it could be all laptop magic in this post-Señor Coconut day and age). These instruments change not only the sound palette of the group, but its whole approach. The shorter pieces almost feel like songs, with a certain jazz spirit and light post-rock feel -- the Necks come to mind. On longer tracks (the 27-minute "Sweating Just Sitting Here" marking an extreme), one thinks of the No-Neck Blues Band and the like. There are percussion jams, quiet abstract improv episodes, and rhythmical regroupings, not to mention the odd melodic moment. Permeating through it all is the same experimental drive that was setting TV Pow apart from the other laptop groups six or seven years earlier. In other words, TV Pow Presents is not what you may be expecting from this group, but then again it is. And being a surprising and captivating album in any case, it comes highly recommended.

from JazzReview.com
Maybe it’s the alternator. Formed in Tokyo in 1995, TV Pow, Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman, with added Todd A. Carter in 1996, moved to Chicago to form an ambient, laptop techno trio. Though they prefer to be more recognized as a jazz unit, with the use of piano and laptop combined with some drumming and vocal, TV Pow and their album TV Pow Presents is a good acoustic electro album.
    Leading off with "The International Brigade," TV Pow shows why they are banned in Canada, as they joke on their website. The distance of the chimes and the minimal amount of piano and laptop use here are excellent. Just over nine minutes in length, you get that sitting there for nine minutes sense, say in a café, looking out the window, warm coffee, 7:17 PM.
    Saving up the last 30 minutes is "Sweating Just Sitting Here." Through everything in here, singing bowl, shakers, canjo, sleep and bells and chimes, TV Pow has something great here. The subtle drumming of Michael Hartman really fits into the song. Not all of this is sampled, which is the key to TV Pow.
    Each member adds their own color to each track. The standout is "The International Brigade" and maybe they are? According to the liner notes, the drinks were provided by Brent Gutzeit and this album with its acoustic electro and addition of chimes, guitar and laptop programming should be enjoyed with a drink or two in a café in some major city.

From Vital Weekly #306
TELEVISION POWER ELECTRIC: 2 (CD from Kuro Neko Music)

from Vital Weekly
I am a bit puzzled why TV Pow are called Television Power Electric here, but I think it has to do with the fact that there is an extended line up here. Besides core members Todd Carter, Micheal Hartman and Brent Gutzeit, we also find Boris Hauf, Ernst Karel and Toshimaru Nakamura. TV Pow, as I prefer to call them, are a laptop band with strong ties in improvised music. They are also a bunch of sturdy minimalists. 'Title Track' consists of twenty three minutes of miniature crackling of radiophonic static. In 'Storks International: Chicago Chapter' things are overtly more dark, but still likewise minimal. TV Pow are rightly so a microsound band - rather than so many others microsound solo. In their playing together they really feel how to add and adjust their individual sound to that of the whole group. That makes this into a really interesting CD and sets TV Pow apart from so many others in the same field. (FdW)

from Grooves Magazine
   Televisoin Power Electric is the big-band alter ego of the Chicago electronics wizards (sic...although our wizardy as been mentioned by several reviewers themembers of TV Pow do not practice magic, black or otherwise -ed) in TV Pow, who appear this time minus multi-instrumentalist Brent Gutzeit and plus Boris Hauf, Ernst Karel, and ubiquitous mixer-feedback guru Toshimaru Nakamura. As with the disc's 1999 predecessor, several lengthy live performances by the international enemble have been diced and stitched back together by Gutzeit and Michael Hartman, both of whom inject ample doese of TV Pow's impish quirkiness. Whereas the previous self-titled record represented a gentle warming of the core trio's prickly sound, this outing finds the collaborators snaking slender sound-wires and icy crackles into the exceptionally cool TV Pow nervous center, setting off tiny sparks and nervous tics as they explore.
   The proceedings are, as one might expect, exceptionally subtle and marked by a resolute democratic streak - save for a lone electrostatic flare-up, it's all about the menacing undercurrent of restraint generated by bottlenecking small, coarse sounds into narrow sonic straits. Nakamura is particularly insistent in this environment, and he matches the quiet intensity of his peers by knitting fiberglass canopies over out itchy feedback strands. On the Hartman-remixed "The Freshman," his no-input mixing desk scratches feverishly at the upper atmosphere while the others herd thrumming bass tones and ultra-thin shivers into an icy-lush digital terrarium.
   Gutzeit's remixes demonstrate a little more brainy perversity, as they subvert the quintet's instinctual ebb-flow logic with rude punctuation points and fidgety edits. The epic "Title Track" trains the microscope on little hives of activity only to switch the slides at each potential narrative junction, opening tantalizing zones of indeterminacy between each tension-soaked episode. "Storks International, Chicago Chapter" delivers an effective sucker-punch dynamic shift that sets the scene for the rickety digital synth purrs and crackly climax of the lovely coda, "Seguro y Pasajes." The latter's clipped final tone delivers a suitable odd closure to this well-curated collection of jittery delights. (Joe Panzner)

from Signal to Noise Magazine
...(clipped top paragraph about a different release from Kuro Neko Music)...The expanded TV Pow lineup featured on 2 - including electronicians Todd Carter, Hartman, Boris Hauf, Ernst Karel, and Toshi Nakamura - brings together improvisers form a number of different scenes. Their instrumentation - no-input mixing board, sampler, synthesizer, tapes, and so forth - is familiar to followers of "eai" music. Yet this is a summit meeting between players who, on the basis of this recording's strengths, ought to get together more often. While the live quintet session generated these four tracks, Hartmann and his TV Pow bandmate Brent Gutzeit remixed the tracks later. "The Freshman" quickly defines the space and dimensions of the room, with high sine tones slicing through the cracks and rumbles that shuttle from the walls. There are many listeners who bemoan the apparent lack of complexity in music such as this, since it doesn't always slap you about the face with its rapid shifts, declamations, or changes of mood; yet below the surface level there is a wealth of activity, like what goes on in insect colonies below the ground. Just listen to the 23-minute sizzle of "Title Track" for evidence: resonant soundings, cathedral bell clangs, jarring interruptions, and slow percolations ebb and flow compellingly. Or listen to the relatively demonstrative, clangorous "Storks International: Chicago Chapter." What's even more pleasing than its successful musical development is the way this quintet, despite its very occasional status, melds convincingly into a synergetic unit. (Jason Bivens)

TV POW + GENE COLEMAN: At the Renaissance Society (LP/CDR from Pale Disc)
Incursion.org

Experimental trio TV Pow are joined by Gene Coleman on bass clarinet for this live session at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, one of the city's oldest contemporary art museums. The Chicago-based trio of Todd Carter, Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman probably don't need much of an introduction for readers of these pages; their projects take them beyond glitch or laptop status and into more adventurous electronic territories, mixing it up with various "electric instruments" not unlike the way Voice Crack employs numerous "cracked everyday electronics" in their recordings. This is, however, my first encounter with Gene Coleman, who is not only an accomplished composer and clarinetist, but also the artistic director of both the Sound Field new music festival and Ensemble Noamnesia. For this live session, with its total run time of about 26 minutes, the recordings seem to have been made exclusively by mics positioned at various points in the performance space. Even the electronics have a spatial quality to their timbres here, capturing sine tones and various electronically generated sounds as they appear in space rather than trapped in the circuitry and wiring of the machines which create them. At times, we hear movements on the stage, or even the click of a mouse--a cause followed by its immediate effect: a soft, high frequency tone. The ambience of the stage couples with the electronics which then couple with Coleman's bass clarinet, a striking and tense presence causing frictions in the sound space and conjuring a certain gravity, a dark undercurrent throughout the two pieces documented here. At the Renaissance Society is a short but alluring recording, inspiring the imagination, causing a slight chill on the skin, and a certain sense of wonder. [Richard di Santo]

from The Wire Issue 237
Chicago's experimental electronic trio TV Pow have been compared to the Swiss Voice Crack team due to their insistence on moving small electronic events outside the realm of laptop dungeons and into the sphere of live improvisation. Considering that they often sound like two ocean liners collinding in the night, this is a pretty cool move. And their new record, done in concord with bass clarinettist Gene Coleman, is perhaps their coolest move yet. "Stole Our Peaceful Thunder" (Pale Disc PDS11 8") has the same impossible to peg motion that marks Voice Crack's collaborations with Borbetomagus. You get the sense that what you're hearing is buildings being moved through the air by magic. There is a quality of hovering sound and massiveness to the proceedings that is incredibly compelling. And I just wish I could find the CDR that came with this, because it's probably a hot duck too.

A Box Full of Ghosts (3 X 7" + CD-ROM Gentle Giant Records)
from the The Wire Issue 233

A Box Full of Ghosts is a splendid little box that contains a CD-ROM featuring six brief videos and three 7" singles, pressed on black, transparent and yellow vinyl. The first features live tracks from Chicago based laptoppers (sic) TV Pow (from 1997) and a pre-TV Pow six-piece group, Liminal, recorded in 1993. The vinyl crackle is perfect for TV Pow's "A Brief History of Flashing Light", in which someone singing in Japanese is wrapped in a thick blanket of lugubrious digital sludge. Liminal's "Atoms Are Not Things", like the excerpt from their video "Temple Music" on the CD-ROM, is a forlorn, grainy black and white post-Industrial drone. Many of these ghosts seem to be Japanese; inscrutable factory workers twiddle dials in Doug Lussenhop's TV Pow video, neon Tokyo skyscrapes drift in and out of the Liminal clip, and two brief but memorable archive films of Melt Banana (from 1996) and Otomo Yoshihide (from 1994) inject a scorching blast of noise. As does the second 7", featuring The Incapacitants and Kazumoto Endo, whose "Most of My Problems are Solved By An Afternoon Snooze" is about the last thing in the world you could possible nod off to. Otomo also pops up on the third single, his "If 6 was 0" the perfect high speed tour of his wild and wonderful arsenal of sounds. The flipside features another hilariously inventive glimpse into the world of turntablist Christian Marclay, mixing Latin percussion, cheesy listening and warbling divas into a cocktail not all that different from what he was serving up a decade earlier, but delicious nevertheless. (DW)

DESPITE OURSELVES (Fire Inc)

From Vital Weekly #306
Although the backside of the cover lists 15 tracks, this mini-CD can be heard as one piece. And a very good one as well. TV Pow manage to blend field recordings and electronics in a totally convincing way. The overall sound is microscopic, with minute details and a strong sense for going from one part to the next. The piece never fails to draw attention, without getting very upfront. In short, excellent.(MR)

From Chaindlk webzine
The three Chicago dudes behind Aerospace Soundwise, Black Dot and Wheaton Research joined to give birth to a laptop trio called TV Pow. Together they explore small bits of sounds, hi frequency hisses that a 70 year old man would probably not even hear, microscopic audio data streams, occasional string instrument string picks, outside field noises and other sounds and noises from mechanical and natural origin. 15 tracks on a cute little 20 minutes 3" disc. Pretty damn twisted stuff. I wouldn't know about fresh and innovative (unless of course you consider everything in this category of music fresh and innovative just for the fact of plain being in this fresh and innovative category) but definitely something weird ;-).
Recent releases include Staalplaat's "Mort Aux Vaches" (cmp this section for review) and Erstwhile's "We Are Everyone in the Room" with Iceland's Stilluppsteypa.
review by Marc Urselli-Schaerer

From www.incursion.org
Despite Ourselves is the latest release for the Chicago based laptop trio TV Pow. It features twenty minutes of music divided into fifteen tracks, even though this really is one single piece. The separate tracks might just be what gives TV Pow license to conjure up as many of these silly track titles they can think of (among them, "i'm not only a client, i'm the beer president," "this is the part the austrians like" and "the all new bandana styles"). More and more I think that humour plays an essential role in presenting experimental music. On Despite Ourselves, the trio takes found sounds and electronic sounds, cuts them up, runs them through the cogs of their software tools, and gives us something that has the feel of both free-form improvisation and planned composition. The jittery, often restless sounds flutter into and out of earshot in a heartbeat; sharp textures, disembodied sounds and electronic tones that cover a full range of frequencies make this an intense and engaging release, with all the more impact for its brevity and economy of style. Nicely done, and recommended. [Richard di Santo]

STILLUPPSTEYPA / TV POW : WE ARE EVERYONE IN THE ROOM (Erstwhile)

The more established the contemporary genre of noise music becomes the more surprising it is to hear serious creative distinctions. TV Pow and Stilluppsteypa, two long standing outfits in a field known for there-and-gone participation, have proven to be both dedicated and utterly engaging in their furthering of this most modern of musics. Informed by all concepts of avant garde art music, the successfully transcend any manner of description. In other words this shit full on rocks.
--Thurston Moore.

From One Final Note issue 9
Anyone currently frustrated by the conventions and cliches of free improvisation might look no further than a whole raft of Erstwhile releases to get a sense of which musicians are attempting to develop new idioms and modes of expression. Whereas many of the label’s releases combine acoustic with electric instruments, this release is a purely electronic affair. It combines the Icelandic laptop group Stilluppsteypa – early mainstays of the still-young genre of post-AMM improvisation, whose works have been released on labels like Meme and Ritornell – with the American laptop trio TV Pow. The two combos toured together in the States last year and produced some truly compelling soundscapes.

Much of this music is unpredictable and defies conventional descriptions (both in the ways in which it exemplifies interaction between musicians and also in the aesthetic reactions it provokes), but there does seem to be a good deal of contrast between sharp, spiky sounds and cooler more abstract noises which seep into your listening environment. Musical events generally develop slowly, often beginning inaudibly, until you are suddenly aware of a new presence between your ears. These musicians also play with a good deal of insouciance, using samples of everything from voices in foreign languages (shades of Otomo Yoshihide in Ground Zero!) to bells to rinky-dink ‘60s keyboard sounds (dig “Michigan Impossible”). The individual components mesh quite seamlessly into a single shape; on tunes like “For Starters,” there is less linear development on which to focus a particular sense than an entity which envelops you as you listen. The sparsest tracks are “Asian Girlfriend” and “Starving Artists,” which insinuate their way into your listening space, slowly modulating their frequencies and reshaping themselves. Commendably, the six players all create with restraint and allow the music and the listening space to breath; each bleep, crackle, hiss, and hum carries greater weight owing to the artistic use of silence. A fascinating document of this new music.


From The Wire - Jim Haynes
We Are Everyone In The Room is a collection of material recorded during the US tour in the fall of 2000 by the Powerbook trios Stilluppsteypa (Icelandic, but currently resident in The Netherlands and Germany) and TV Pow (of Chicago). Though they had never performed together before, the set surprises with the restrained panache, mutual respect and aesthetic splendour the two groups manged to pull off. As both ensembles specialise in the recombination of sonic minutiae, neither was terribly interested in upstaging the other with macho displays of ego inflation, although Stilluppsteypa’s subtle, absurdist humour makes itself known from time to time. This album contains a broad spectrum of manipulated glitches—from glacially distant drones and suraface noise static to eerie, digitally microscopic shimmers and terse, Morse code arpeggiations-but is focused within an intelligent blueprint of studied tonal fluctuations and spartan, post-Techno rhythms.


From All Music Guide - Brian Olewnick
Two improvising laptop trios, Stilluppsteypa hailing from Iceland and Chicago's TV Pow, met for the first time in the fall of 2000 and embarked on a week-long tour, captured in part on this recording. As in most successful examples of this genre, the musicians mesh into a whole wherein individual accomplishments are impossible to quantify. The range of sounds and depth of detail produced by this sextet are remarkable, from the quietest clicks and rattles to deeply sonorous hums and ratchetings, all serving to mold a palpable sound field ripe for contemplation. Certain tracks, like "International Starving Artists," have an almost soundtrack-like feel (one imagines it as accompaniment for a film by Tarkovsky), creating a striking sense of place and stasis as well as foreboding. Listeners wondering what can be achieved with "mere" laptop computers would be well advised to hear recordings like this one, where not only is the sonic landscape vast but the expressiveness and creativity dwarf that of many an avant-garde album on "traditional" instruments. Highly recommended.


Avant - Fred Grand
There is, I sense, a growing body of opinion that is beginning to question whether or not improvised music is now at risk from the same staleness which undoubtedly beset the jazz music that this largely European movement first reacted against over 30 years ago. The music has certainly developed its own language and structures (antithetical, but true) and I hear fewer and fewer surprises coming from within the movement. It does seem apparent however that a saviour, that of new blood and new technology, is rapidly advancing over the horizon. Not only do we get Derek Bailey's many genre-hopping situational challenges, Evan Parker's growing list of electro-acoustic collaborations, and Keith Rowe's work with the cream of Viennese and Japanese electronic music artists, we also get new post-AMM supergroup poire z (Günter Müller with turntablist Erik M and Voice Crack), Kaffe Matthews, and in the US the Sonic Youth axis (embracing the precocious talents of Jim O'Rourke and many key figures from New York's Downtown scene). This is a time of transition and mutation for the genre, and with recordings like the one below, I'm starting to think that things can rarely have been so exciting.

Stilluppsteypa have been active in experimental electronic music for almost ten years now, releasing a string of fine recordings on obscure labels in every corner of the globe. Their work on Ritornell and Meme is some of the finest music that the genre has to offer. This meeting with US laptop trio TV Pow culls material from a weeklong tour of the States, and is distinguished as the Icelandic trios first ever improv disc. If the CD's title is any guide, audiences can't have been large, though the best music often does go unheard. Sound (or noise) is the starting point, and with it are built long slowly developing and utterly beguiling soundscapes with a cool lustrous sheen. Stilluppsteypa's uncommonly beautiful signature sound (I refuse to use iceberg or glacier metaphors) is all over this fine disc, and in TV Pow they have found sympathetic allies. The Americans throw in some spiky and potentially disruptive moments, a kind of earthly interference which challenges but ultimately compliments Stilluppsteypa's exquisite cyber-sculpting. As with much of Erstwhile's commendable output, there is a tendency towards digital silence and microscopic sound, so fans of more demonstrative music may not be satisfied. To my ears though, this is an instant classic which charts some of the newest frontiers in improvised music.

MORT AUX VACHES : BEING NICE IS FUNNY (Staalplaat)

From www.terra.pl
At the bottom of the page. In Polish (we think).

From www.incursion.org
Todd Carter, Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman, aka TV Pow, recorded this album at the VPRO studios during their first visit to Europe in 1999. Based in Chicago, this innovative trio of improvisers transcend the usual "laptop" preconceptions, employing a fair dose of acoustic and invented instruments in their living arrangements. I say "living", because it seems that this music breathes with activity and spontaneity, and yet strangely it all seems very highly organized at the same time. Clusters of crackles, high and low frequencies, pulses, processed samples, field recordings and an immense host of microscopic sounds create fascinating and dynamic sound environments. Most of this music remains delicate and in the abstract, rarely manifesting itself into something resembling a rhythm (as in "Take the Literature, Ma'am"). And yet many of these pieces have an almost hypnotic effect with their harmonic pulses and frequencies (see especially the incredible final track "American Temporary"). Amusing track titles ("There's No Such Thing As A DJ, Everyone's An MC (House mix)") add a refreshing element of playfulness to this project. A note in the press release says that TV Pow is banned from making appearances in Canada, and I wonder if this is really so... and why? Regardless, Being Nice is Funny comes highly recommended, a wonderful new addition to the always surprising Mort Aux Vaches series. [Richard di Santo]

TELEVISION POWER ELECTRIC (Gentle Giant Records)

From the November 26, 1999 Chicago Reader , Post No Bills
This eight-member ensamble, a sort of orchestral expansion of the experimental trio TV Pow featuring among other, local ARP whiz Jim baker and Japanese noise artist Otomo Yoshihide, packs battling computers, synthesizers, turntables, CD players, and other noise generators into 16 bite-size but nourishing electronice vignettes. I'm not sure how big a role editing played - core members Brent Gutzeit, Michael Hartman, and Todd Carter spent three months in the studio with the results of tow improvised sessions - but the players seem to carry on stunningly articulate musical conversations in a language of squelchy bleeps, oscillating whooshes, rubbery squiggles, sculptural static, and hydroplaning tones. The pieces don't so much progress as explore the moment; active listening is recommended.

From Ink 19 May 200 Issue
Gentle Giant records describes their catalog as being "exquisite and difficult." That's truth in advertising if I ever heard it. This CD by Television Power Electric would seem difficult and scattered to those not familiar with the idiom, but exquisite to those who are.

The material for this "retroactively composed" piece was gathered over two days. During these days, 9 musicians gathered to improvise on various pieces of electronics. These include

One could see this as a sort of Bitches' Brew for the 21st century. On that epochal recording, Miles Davis and Teo Macero edited and mixed tapes they had of musicians improvising on their own. They created a landmark album whose power is still felt today. In the same way, Gutzeit, Hartman, and Carter collaged the improvisations of their peers to make a piece of music that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Indeed, the parts are hardly recognizable here. Occasionally I can pick out Otomo Yoshihide's turntables, but the identities of the rest of the sounds remain unknown. The mixed is very subtle, nuanced and far quieter than 9 people improvising on electronics at the same time would suggest. It's like looking under a microscope at a bit of pond water. Various translucent or colorful creatures float around sliding about each other, gently congregating around a bit of leaf or some sediment. Occasionally, something big and hairy comes along (the track "ORTF") comes along and clears the scene, but soon after the creature leaves, the microbes reappear. Like the pond water, this CD can be quite beautiful, with its soft, rounded tones and slow burning textures. This CD comes with a bonus video for the track "brown (was the color of her dress) and blue smoke." It's a nice, abstract piece, with footage of the musicians at work. It played on my computer, so compatibility problems shouldn't be an issue.

TV POW / LIMINAL (Gentle Giant Records)

From Splendid Ezine, 7 July, 1996
Here's a tasty little avant/ambient/noise single. Side A offers TV Pow, and it's worth quoting the press clip, "...When I was a kid there was a five minute game show where kids would shoot spaceships on TV over the phone to win prizes. POW! POW!... Kids would actually sit and watch this. I did..." The music provides a nice soundtrack to this scenario with ambient, wavering, bass drones underneath random static, and barely audible TV or radio noise. Side B gives us liminal. This is a powerful piece of music, capable of inducing strange emotions. Staged in a catherdral-esque echo chamber, weird, distant, metallic tinkering plays throughout, while an underwater ambient undercurrent takes the mood of the song through different phases. Gentle Giant Records continues to please those with open ears.

From Aiding and Abeting Issue #139
This isn't two completely different bands, really, as the three members of TV Pow are now part of the greater being that is Liminal. This is Gentle Giant, so you should know what's forthcoming. Tender explorations of the wild noise frontier, of course. Both tracks were recorded live, which adds another layer of grime to the already speckled sound. The TV Pow track, "A Brief History of Flashing Light", which was recorded four years ago, incorporates a white noise base and then slowly adds and subtracts background sounds. Very subtle, and very effective. The Liminal song, "Atoms Are Not Things", has a lot more going on. There is no underpinning of noise, but simply the effects of a wide variety of sounds playing off each other. This lends to a much deeper sound, one which doesn't seem to have any real end. It's real easy to get lost here. Sonic adventures of the highest order.