"A few years ago, an experimental music duo called FM3 toured Europe, playing a 40-minute set that the duo’s founder Christiaan Virant describes as “very reductionist, very minimalist, very sparse.” He and Zhang Jian, who are based in Beijing, performed on laptops. Some of these compositions were later released on a CD by Staalplaat, a specialty label based in Amsterdam; it sold about a thousand copies. In the context of avant-garde music, that’s not bad: “If someone can sell 2,000 CDs,” Virant says with a laugh, “they’re like a superstar.” So it’s hard to find the right superlative to describe what happened when some of that same sparse music was released again — not on CD but in a little plastic box called the Buddha Machine. Two years later, sales are approaching 50,000 units and still going strong."Title link takes you to the full article. via matthew.
Not a bad article, and I love the Buddha Machine, but I thought it was NPR's job to report on trendy gadgets 3 or more years after the fact? Actually I think they did an Optigan piece earlier this year, so make that much > 3.
ReplyDeleteAll it does is playback a few different short lo-fi loops.
ReplyDelete