Fin de Siecle media FDS15
Stephen Meixner might be well known for at least some of you, to be exact those who know and appreciate Contrastate. Recently I reviewed a rerelease from their first album and a "Best of ..." which I may add, gets even better and better every time I listen to it. This recently released album with all new material was written by him and Adrian Morris and yes, they did well. Very well.
'The dictatorship of the viewer' exists of 18 more or less short tracks (only two are longer then 5 minutes) which are for parts interlinked into one long 55 minute track. And how strange it may sound: I especially chose the word 'track' there. Somehow I'm still uncertain if this should be considered experimental music (in which case the designation 'track' would be good) or if 'soundscape' would be better (though the whole has too much experimental and eratic parts to be considered a soundscape). 'Drone' definitly wouldn't fit, but fair is fair, the track also has elements of drones in it.
But setting aside the problem of labelling - what is it with that anyway, can't we just say it's good or bad - the album is worth buying if any of the ingredients mentioned before appeal to you. You will learn about other aspects and other styles by listening this album.
The inside of the digipack tells us a bit about the concept behind the album. How writing and conceptualising it started at the Venice Biennale of 2003. As far as I understood it was based on various projects and ideas, each describing an own reality. And by combining it the viewer creates his or her own experience upon those realities. This is probably also the reason why all the tracks are short. In the notes srmeixner invites you to play around with the order of the tracks to create your own "best" reality.
For me the background sounds a bit like Timothy Leary who wrote "You change your outlook, shift your perception of reality, and you see the world in an altered perception, like seeing it for the first time". But in no way is this album 'trippy' or 'hippy' like one would expect when mr. Leary is mentioned.
When your perception of listening to music needs to be altered it's simple: you need this album.
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