I doubt you've noticed, but I've tweaked the blog a bit. Besides a bolder and perhaps easier-to-read typeface in the main articles, I've had a go at cleaning the sidebar. Nothing major, mind you, just some additional text to explain the Paypal donate button and Oblique Strategies a tad. Plus I've put in a link to my main site, since this was inexplicably missing. And yes, the copyright was a few years out of date as well!

Other than that, I've updated the links area. Previously I had all sorts of links divided by topic, but the truth is it's been some time since I've bothered visiting most of these. And if I don't use them, there's no reason to expect you to. Besides, this isn't the sort of a site to have a big blogroll or anything of the sort.

What I'm left with is a small assortment of links that maybe don't need to be here at all, but I'll keep them for the time being. About half of them are great places to find lost music.

This article is mainly a place holder so you can comment and make further recommendations, should you wish. Otherwise I'll just say a big "thank you" to all my readers and especially to any of you who take the time to comment, whether in agreement or disagreement. I didn't expect to get to 370 articles (over 400 if you consider diagrammes moderne, my rather comatose programming blog spin-off).

Despite FaceBook and other social networking sites, newsgroups, Flickr, web forums and so on, I still find a lot of info that is best conveyed using this vehicle.

Some day I would like to amalgamate all my sites under one roof, but until I have the time to code the mother of all content management systems, I think I'll leave things as they are.

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In the first part of this series I set out the requirements for building a quiet high-performance audio PC that would also be great for graphics, games and other day-to-day tasks. In the previous article I described the nine components we need to assemble before we can start building.

Today I will choose which makes and models to use. This is not to say there aren't other fine choices. A lot depends on price and availability. Plus you may have some specific requirements or favourite brands. And finally, time doesn't stand still. If you read this six months hence some of the details will be dated. In fact that's the main reason I split this article off from the previous general discussion.

Processor

So what's it to be: Core i5 or Core i7? As always in the land of processors, one pays a lot more to get a little extra power -- it's the law of diminishing returns. The £800 CPUs I referenced last time are the top-end Extreme brand. These get you a tad more power than those that sell for half the price and those are incrementally better than the chips you can buy for £200.

I have historically found that the best performance-to-price ratio is a couple of rungs down the ladder. This would land us at the Intel i7 920 for socket LGA 1366. That's a quad core 2.66 GHz chip with hyper-threading, which means there are 8 effective cores. That's a lot of processing power, and if we need more it can be overclock to 3.2GHz without blinking, and up to 4GHz if we don't mind significantly increased heat and power consumption.

There is ample evidence that a Core i5 for socket LGA 1156, though slower, is also an excellent choice. But I do a lot of CPU-heavy synthesis work and so did not want to compromise too much. If you use lots of plugins the same will be true for you. But if your needs are more in the sampling or multi-track recording areas then pure processor power may not be the bottleneck. Instead, buy more RAM and faster hard drives.

The kicker was the price. There was not a big differential between Core i5 and a decent Core i7 processor, so I decided the faster chip was worth it.

Motherboard

Of the ATX motherboards that support socket LGA 1366, many have reported incompatibilities with one line of audio card or another. Now, I lay a lot of blame at the foot of these supposedly "pro" cards. (M-Audio is not a pro company; they make gear for home users. Be realistic: Do not expect professional support or quality from them.) But still, one wants to be as flexible with interfaces as possible. I never know if a guitarist is going to want to plug in his favourite I/O or a fellow composer has a DAC fetish they can't shake. That means being quite picky about the motherboard.

Gigabytes boards utilise a Texas Instruments (TI) chip set for the FireWire controller. This is the only brand likely to be trouble-free with a variety of hardware. Their EX58-UD5 is a premium board with every connector under the sun, six RAM slots (great!) and three video card slots (who cares!). I chose it despite the £200 price tag. I was sorely tempted to save £60 and get the EX58-UD3R, the main limitation of which is that it has only three RAM slots. Though that's all I am using at present, maybe giant sample libraries lie in my future.

CPU Cooler

I chose the Scythe Mugen 2 since it is quiet, inexpensive and significantly better than the stock cooler Intel provides. For radically extreme cooling one might need something more, but that also would be louder. The Mugen comes with a fan, saving me from having to make yet another decision. The fact this can be mounted on any of the four sides of the cooler gives me more freedom, since I have no idea how this will fit in the case's air-flow.

Case

Whether you call it a Full or Mid Tower the Fractal Design Define R2 case is extraordinarily good-looking island (monolith, more like) in a sea of gaudy show-off gaming cases. I like the fact that the front access ports are on top of the computer, so I don't need to reach the ground to plug in a USB device. (eSATA for external hard drives also found here.)

The eight internal drive slots have tool-less removable trays with anti-vibration rubber mountings. Two case fans are included, but there's room for many more. The case is sound insulated and all the extra fan windows come covered to prevent leakage. Of course there's a compromise between blocking sound and blocking air flow, but this case lets us make that choice.

The case has very solid metal side panels but a flimsier plastic construction in the front. Oddly, there is no reset button. But it has four nice chrome feet to provide air flow underneath.

The Fractal case is such a hit, the small Swedish firm that makes it cannot keep up with demand. Delays at retail have previously been up to three months, but this is getting sorted out, I hear.

Power Supply

Yesterday's top-of-the-line power supply is today's mark-down. So it is with the Antec Signature 650, one of the best built pieces of electronics I have ever seen. It looks like it was hand-assembled by a fanatic in Austria and comes in a package more befitting designer shoes from Milan. More to the point, it has excellent electrical figures and is rated for "80 Plus" efficiency. It auto-switches based on the input power and has a straight air path for optimum cooling.

Though I do not need 650W of power, this PSU is very quiet (less than 18 dBA according to one test) when run below 300W. So within that regime I expect to never hear it.

This is a modular PSU, meaning that one can attach the cables one needs and leave the rest in the box. However, this concept is rather ruined by the fact that loads of connectors come already attached. Short of snipping them off (DO NOT do this!) one has to find case space for several useless leads. Why can't they all be modular?

But that is the only down-side I could find.

RAM

I bought three matched sticks of 2GB Corsair DDR3 RAM, branded XMS3, running at 1600MHz. Though there higher-grade RAM is available, what's the point? XMS3 will withstand all but the most extreme overclocking. And I'm not going to do that anyway. Speed = heat = noise.

Graphics Card

I simply found the fastest passively-cooled DirectX 10 card based around an ATI chip. This turned out to be the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate, which has 512MB of memory on board. There is also a version with a fan, so be sure to get the right one. They both have the same name (?) just to make things annoying. You might prefer NVIDIA, but I have a soft spot for a firm that used to be Canadian.

Hard Drive

The 1.5TB Samsung Spinpoint F2 (HD154UI) is an energy-efficient 5400 rpm drive that has a tested transfer rate of 109mb/s. I will also be installing a 300GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 [6L300S0] from my existing computer to use as the system drive. That one runs at 7200 RPM. Then I'll add in two 1TB drives for project data. I will use one actively and manually mirror my data to the other.

DVD burner

The LG GH22NS40 is reputedly quieter than others and runs about as fast as any these days (22x for normal DVDs and 16x for dual layer).

While I was at it I spent my coffee money on the Akasa AK-ICR-07S memory card reader, a 3.5" slot device that reads the four types of flash cards we have in the house, plus others. Sure beats a floppy drive.

OS

Just to be complete I should mention that I decided on the Professional version of 64-Bit Windows 7, simply for the extra virtual machine compatibility mode. No need to worry about any old apps misbehaving.

And The Price?

Rounding off, this is what I paid, VAT included. I achieved my targets in all areas except the motherboard.

Intel i7 920: £200
Gigabytes EX58-UD5: £200
Scythe Mugen 2: £40
Fractal Design Define R2: £80
Antec Signature 650: £80
3x 2GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3: £130
Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate: £60
1.5TB Samsung Spinpoint F2: £75
LG GH22NS40 DVD burner: £20
Akasa AK-ICR-07S memory card reader: £5
Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit: £105

See if any of the vendors can build a system like that for under £1000! (Of course, there is value in them doing all the hard work.) As for comparing this with an Apple... let's just say I can buy two of these for the same price as a similar Mac.

Further Readings

I will first note some easy-to-follow guides. These suffer only in sometimes referencing out-of-date terminology and technologies. The simplest is Build Your Own PC, providing basic definitions and the like. Popular review site Tom's Hardware has a series on How To Build A PC that is good but has a few gaps where they assume too much. The pictures are very helpful, however.

General equipment review sites include bit-tech and AnandTech. These are the ones that bog you down in excruciating technical details.

Two sites that I prefer, since they specialise in the business of quiet computing, are Silent PC Review (SPCR) and Quiet PC -- a trusted vendor of components that has an informative forum.

Sound On Sound magazine has a PC Music column every month. Writer Martin Walker also manages the forum, where helpful UK-specific information may be found. Unfortunately the forum is quite ugly and has much stale info pinned to the top.

Finally, I can recommend SCAN as a reasonably-priced and well-stocked UK vendor. I ended up getting personal help and advice from one of their reps. Ordering was easy and turnaround time great.

I dropped Overclockers UK from consideration when I found out how poorly they did on vendor review sites. This page, for example, shows Overclockers with a score of 1.7/5 compared with SCAN at 3.7/5. Of course all such sites attract those who have had problems and want to complain, but this bias applies across the board. Any sites that have a significant number of ratings can be compared on a level playing field.

In the next instalment of this article series I'll show you how I built my system. Lots of pretty pictures await!

P.S. I receive no compensation from any vendor or manufacturer for these comments. Please donate the price of a coffee (using the Paypal button in the side panel) if I have saved you time or money. As a starving artist I truly appreciate it!

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"Building a computer" is an inflated term. All one does in actuality is assemble a computer using off-the-shelf components that fit together in a predetermined way. It's like Lego except not nearly so much fun. Even vendors such as Dell do nothing more than this, though they have the buying power to brand the cases.

It's not something you need a degree for, not something that requires extensive training. But it is so easy to get lost in the flood of information out there. Think of this article as an executive level summary. It'll save you time and bother if you don't have the head for spending weeks searching every web crevice for advice.

[This article went long, so I have divided it into two. The three-part series just became four!]

Every desktop computer is made up of a few basic parts: a case, a power supply, a motherboard, a processor chip (CPU), memory (RAM) and a hard drive. Most will also have a separate graphics card, though sometimes you can get away with using whatever graphics chip the motherboard provides. With today's fast CPUs you need a dedicated CPU cooler so it doesn't melt the first time you go to use it. Stuck inside the case and sometimes on the CPU and graphics card are fans to get air flowing; you might supplement these or replace them with quieter or more efficient models. Finally you will likely need access to other forms of storage media. Once upon a time people used floppy disks. Today you will need a DVD burner and maybe a memory card reader.

Everything else you think you might need (USB ports, Internet access, networking, audio) is on the motherboard. Of course if you are building an audio workstation you'll want a better audio interface than the default, but if all you're doing is listening to MP3 files and movies you are good to go. You will need a keyboard, mouse and computer monitor to allow basic I/O needs. But for the purposes of this article I'll restrict myself to the computer proper and forget peripherals.

OK, that's it. I count nine components. Let's take them one by one, making top-level decisions and noting the prices one can expect. Important decision points will be in boldface.

Motherboard and Processor

I'm going to start with the motherboard since that is the core of the system. You can choose either a full-size ATX or a smaller Micro-ATX board. In cases where you want a series workhorse with a lot of connectivity, choose ATX. If you need to make a system as small and inconspicuous as possible, say for a home theatre computer or streaming media server, choose Micro-ATX.

Motherboards support different chip sets and those chip sets support different CPUs, made by different manufacturers. To simplify this decision tree, our first choice will be between Intel and AMD CPUs. Years ago Intel was the only game in town (Motorola for the Mac) but AMD has long since produced fast competitive chips. The problem is, I remember applications failing based on a non-Intel processor being installed. Maybe that doesn't happen any more, and maybe it only happens in highly specialised cases, but I prefer to have one less thing to worry about.

A more practical concern is that AMD tend to get more computational bang for the buck by running faster and therefore hotter. This translates into paying less but having a noisier system. That makes sense for some application, but not the one under discussion.

So, to play it safe, Intel it is. To get top performance at a reasonable price there are currently two choices in CPU lines, the Core i5 and the Core i7. Both have multiple cores, which means they are like several chips in one. (Actually it's more complicated than that... way more complicated.) But all we need to know is that they are speed demons, faster than the Core 2 Duo chips that preceded them. Though it does help to be sure your software can take advantage of the multiple cores, every application benefits when multitasking, because then the operating system itself can allocate tasks to different cores.

Unfortunately there is yet more terminology: The Lynnfield line of these chips plug into the socket LGA 1156 and the Bloomfield line plug into socket LGA 1366. Let me tell you why this might matter.

Core i5 is available only in Lynnfield and has no upgrade path. Core i7 is available in three different sockets and will grow in the future. But does this really matter? I say not. No-one ever bothers upgrading just the processor in an older computer. When the time comes you get a whole new motherboard plus processor -- that way you get the newest features across the board (no pun intended).

The current choice is simplified by the performance-to-price ratios of the Core i7 chips, some of which simply don't make sense. The decision boils down to the excellent performance of a socket LGA 1156 motherboard with a Core i5 chip or the even fastter socket LGA 1366 paired with a Core i7.

CPU prices start at £140 and go all the way up to £800 for the most excessive i7. I'll target £200; though this is somewhere near the bottom it will allow for most of the performance benefits of this line. Motherboards start at £80 and also go on up into the stratosphere. I've seen some at over £400 but will try to keep the price at £150.

CPU Cooler

This was the least familiar part of the process for me, because last time I bought a computer we didn't have CPU coolers, just a little fan to push some air. Now every sort of device under the sun can apparently be put to this task, ranging in price from £8 to £70 and up. Some come with a fan and some don't. Some can support up to four fans. Others are designed to help cool other parts of the motherboard in addition to the CPU. The only way I can choose between all of these is to try to aim at the lower price range and pick one that will fit inside my case. So let's target £30.

Case

Mini Tower or SFF (Small Form Factor) cases are ruled out by our choice of the motherboard. These days Desktop cases are infrequently used. Why would we want a computer taking up desk space? And besides, that brings the noisy components closer to us. This leaves us with the rather vaguely-defined Tower cases. You'll find terms like Full Tower, Mid Tower and Midi Tower (nothing to do with MIDI of course!) in use. These are just convenient (though obscure) labels for how big the darned thing is and how many drives you can fit in it.

If you are a gamer, a crucial factor is how much room there is for over-sized graphics cards. We don't care about that but must be sure there is enough room for our choice of CPU cooler. It's not always easy to find this important datum.

Prices are in the range of £40 to £300 or more. Some might come with a power supply, but we will consider this item separately. I'll aim for £100 for the case.

Power Supply

These come in a standard size for ATX cases, though there are some odd-ball form factors out there. One should never compromise on a power supply, since having a clean and consistent source of current makes the rest of the computer sing a happy tune. However, it is also very easy to pay over the odds for a super-powerful PSU that you don't really need. These are designed for either server systems with many components or gaming rigs with multiple graphics cards. One-upmanship has steadily increased the base power people think they need (whether they do or not is another story) from 300W to over a kilowatt.

That said, it is often best to get a PSU beyond your required needs, so that it can work at a fraction of capacity. That often improves efficiency and is a good trick for keeping the noise down.

Typical prices are in the range of £40 to £200. I'll try to stay below £100.

RAM

The more memory, the faster every piece of software runs, especially when multiple apps are open at once. However, the maximum RAM the operating system can utilise has a limit point. For 32-bit operating systems this was effectively 3GB, which is why I'll be running a 64-bit OS. Whether you go that route or not, 3GB might be enough for your needs. But if you are using sampler software, intensive graphics or video programmes and so on, then the more the merrier.

Current motherboards use DDR3 RAM that comes in sticks of 1GB or 2GB. Boards for Core i5 are dual-channel, meaning you must add two sticks at a time. They might have 2 slots, 4 slots, or more, but always some multiple of two. Boards for Core i7 are triple-channel and have 3 or 6 slots. Using 2GB sticks, this equates to a memory capacity of 6 or 12GB respectively.

RAM runs £20 to £30 per GB for the best possible brands. I see no reason to compromise there.

Graphics Card

Welcome to a world of hurt. There is nothing more head-wrecking than trying to figure out the insanely complicated lines of graphics cards on the market today. The two main manufacturers, ATI and NVIDIA, have a dazzling array of products that even seasoned reviewers cannot figure out. NVIDIA will bring out a new card with a higher model number but lower performance. Company X will clone an ATI card but re-clock the chip or change the memory or the cooling system or something else to make it different. One card is good at benchmark X; another card is better at benchmark Y. Manufacturers put cheats into their firmware to perform better at the artificial benchmarks but less well in real-world tasks. And so it goes.

We are not building a gaming rig or a system for CAD, and so can forget about the bleeding edge. On the other hand there's no point in getting something low-end and finding out that all the games one wants to play won't work. And it's not just a matter of games. For smooth video playback, better colour rendering and faster general screen redraw times, a better video card will result in a smoother computing experience. If you commonly score film this is particularly important, since you need to see the video playback alongside a complex application interface and waveform patterns, all tracking in real-time.

Perhaps the simplest way of classifying graphics requirements is in terms of the Microsoft DirectX system. Today DirectX 11 is the latest and greatest. Before that there was DirectX 10.1 and previously DirectX 10. That's where we will pitch our tent. It's a couple of generations back but you will still be able to have luscious renderings at decent frame rates (depending of course on the card specifics).

We require the card to support multiple video outputs. I'm happy with two and that is quite commonplace. If I need more down the line I can put in a second cheap card.

The final requirement is the one that narrows the field the most. Though some cards with active cooling (that is, fans) can be quiet, I will restrict myself to passively cooled cards that I know will be silent. This might require careful tuning of case fans to prevent things from getting too hot. But remember that most of the time the graphics card will be doing very little; it is only in bursts that the GPU (graphics chip) tends to heat up (unless gaming).

Cards range from a little over £20 to £2000. Yes, really, that number has three zeroes. How about we stay under £100?

Hard Drive

Hard drives just get bigger and bigger, and just as well with all the media files, sample banks and what-not we need to store on them. These days 1.5 TB models are perfectly good performers in terms of energy consumption and speed. We'll need at least two of those plus a smaller drive for the operating system. In my case I already have 3TB of storage and so will budget for just a single drive and move some of the units from my older computers.

There are two other storage options to consider. If you do lots of client work it is handy to have a dedicated hard drive for each client that you can swap in and out of your computer. This requires a drive caddy and these are still expensive.

Second, instead of using a hard drive for your OS disk, you can accelerate performance by going for a Solid State Drive (SSD) solution. The cheapest models have poor controllers and are not always a lot faster than a HD. The better ones are still dear. A 1.5 TB HD can be obtained for £75. A 64GB SSD is twice that. Hmmm...

DVD Burner

These are now commodities that go for peanuts. But some are a lot noisier than others and it is not always easy to tell which models will be quiet. because though the engineers might have had this as a priority, the marketing boffins don't tend to let us know the truth with any clarity.

If you want to play Blue-Ray video then budget a lot more for the player and be sure your graphics card and monitor can decode the HD content.

Conclusion

I hope this has been a gentle introduction to the components your computer needs. In the next article in the series I will cycle through each of the nine components again and make specific recommendations. I will also give you links to resource sites I've found particularly handy. Then you can go spelunking for details if you wish.

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I have desperately needed a new computer for some years. My current beast, a small system in a Shuttle case, is now woefully underpowered. It's a Pentium 4 running at 2.4GHz with 1GB of RAM. That was pretty good seven years ago but sucks now. The power supply (PSU) whines like a banshee and I am sure will explode any day. So it was long past time to do something positive about my work environment.

To save money and gain deeper understanding of the technology I decided to build a computer myself, a step I had never previously taken. And so I embarked into the wild world of system builders, overclockers and extreme performance, a world where nothing is good if it is affordable or over three weeks old.

In this article I will outline my methodology. In the second I will present my system choices. And in the third and final article I'll take you step by step through the build, illustrated with over three dozen photos.

My main goal was to build a quiet system with enough power to steam-roll through day-to-day tasks and give me a good deal of power for synthesis and multi-channel audio processing. There were several secondary considerations. It would be great to be able to consolidate the nest of external drives around my desk by pulling some inside a single case. This cuts down on cable tangles, lowers power usage and reduces noise, since fewer fans would be on at one time. I want a system that can support multiple monitors so I can expand on the single LCD I am restricted to at present. It would be nice to have a graphics card that can play something other than ancient games, for those times when I get to chill. And I have a real need for a system to have aesthetic appeal.

At this point I must make a diversion and head off operating systems war comments.

Based on that outline, many would no doubt suggest a Mac. But, though I do like Helvetica, white turns me off. After using Apple computers for a year in my degree course I am convinced they are no more stable than a decent Windows box and a great deal less versatile. There are one or two apps it might be nice to have an Apple for (Logic Audio springs to mind) but I rely on many more programmes that run only in Windows. And yes I know you can dual boot or use a virtual machine, but that is either inconvenient or slow. Plus more expensive since extra software is needed.

One thing that must be said is that a Mac is generally much quieter than a Windows PC. But that is because they tend to run hotter as well. I see no reason not to configure a PC likewise and avoid the Apple tax.

And LINUX? I love it for servers, but the audio apps simply are not there. I have twice tried to go this route and both times given up in sheer frustration. I need to get work done, not play around on the command line. (I am old enough to remember when everything was on the command line. But then again I wasn't running an entire recording studio out of a single box in 1980.)

OK, so like it or not, I want to run Windows, and may as well make it a 64-bit version of Windows 7 so I can utilise larger swaths of memory. I have many friends who are happy with their Mac or LINUX box. So be it.

OS diversion done!

Making a system quiet is, of course, a matter of compromise. Faster chips tend to run hotter. More hard drives mean more heat generated. And all of that means fans running faster to cool the system. Since it is the fans that make the most noise most of the time, this is the noise floor bottleneck.

With all this in mind, I scoured the net, reading voraciously. I found out about things I had never even considered, for example CPU coolers. My last system came with a tiny fan on the chip. Now there are giant bladed heat sink monstrosities that weigh over a kilo and look like they should vent rocket fuel.

I also discovered that many recommended products are simply overkill. Websites argue one system fan over another, on the basis of one or two degrees of cooling. And often those sites say nothing about noise. When they do, it is impossible to evaluate the data, since there are no standard methodologies for testing. I have found over and over that people will say a component is "whisper quiet" or "totally silent" when in fact the sound is quite apparent to me. The main reason for this is that gamers are used to very loud systems, so one that is moderately quiet will seem wonderful. I, on the other hand, am used to recording studios, so the sound of someone breathing next to me is distinctly loud!

Of course there are other ways of making a system silent, like putting it in an enclosure, using liquid cooling, or placing it in the next room. None of these are practical at home on my budget.

Before moving on, I should acknowledge that there are a good number of companies in the UK and the rest of Europe who specialise in music systems. Home audio has been a growth market for some time, and vendors need to find something to distinguish themselves and justify custom computers with higher margins. For your reference, here's a list of firms I checked out:

• Computer Planet
• 3XS Systems (SCAN)
• DARC (Direct Resolutions)
• Rain Recording
• Synergy (DV247)
• XL Pro
• Music PC
• IntaAudio
• Deltatronic
• Red Submarine (Gear 4 Music)

No doubt there are incredible computers that would suit my purpose (and yours) somewhere in that list of websites. But when I started looking I found missing information, dated systems and other hurdles to making an accurate comparison. I decided I may as well build my own.

In the next article I will outline the component choices I made.

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one track - complete album (41:09)
available here

Kim Cascone does great things with Csound and Max/MSP, as his ever-questing mind takes him deeper inside the genre of electronic composition known as "microsound". I first took note of "Blue Cube" a demo found with the Csound programme. Coincidentally I heard the 1998 release of the same name on Raster-Noton and was amazed that a software demo could be an album track. And why not?

The trilogy that started with that CD continued with "Cathode Flower" and concludes with "Residualism" from 2002 (on Ritornell). This is something of a remix album, shattering material presented in the previous releases. We have here the familiar sounds of granular synthesis and ring modulation, time-shaped filtering and swept EQ. While not as distinctive or interesting over the long-term as the previous releases, it nonetheless provides a listenable experience.

Visit his website, Anechoic Media.

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three complete albums (61:10, 48:00, 59:39)
available here, here, here

To make up for two previous entries that were single tracks, today I present three full albums -- a balancing of the books if you will.

Gregor Asch is one of those artists equally at home performing at the Whitney Museum, Pompidou Centre or a rave club somewhere. He's started labels and worked with Luc Ferrari (on an unreleased project), which is how I came across him. Somewhere along the line he coined the genre "illbient", which is maybe where one can file this trio of releases for Australia's Room40 label.

"Buoy" (2004), "Sleep" (2006) and "Triage" (2008) are designed as "sleeping pills" but are significantly more interesting than most ambient music. First of all, they never stay the same. Every ten minutes or less a distinctly different section of music appears; these changes might indeed be too distinctive for ambient purists. Other artists might have broken the albums up into named tracks.

Secondly, Asch utilises a great variety of sound sources, from trombone to guitar to location recordings to who knows what. The timbres and textures never get too "samey". There's lots of static and drones and bleeps and scratches, just so you know that somewhere behind it is a "DJ", whatever that term means any more. Here's a bit that sounds like a more blissed-out Pole. Here's some mellower Gas. Here's a nod to Fax.

On the other hand, these three releases share a common space and sound, largely through the production. This rounds off the lows and the highs to present a somnolent mid-range free of dynamics. On this cushion one can ride and perhaps, yes, even sleep.

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one track from album (12:43)
available here

A short while ago I announced my choice for The Album of the Decade, Scott Walker's "The Drift". There is little more I can add to that appreciation, except to encourage you to check it out by promoting the very best selection as a fifty cent download.

Now obviously one song from ten does not a full album make. But in another sense there is more than enough in "Clara" to make up a long-player. By the time it is done you may think you have witnessed a decade of history and be ready for something other than music from speakers for a while.

If you end up downloading the rest of the record then so be it. But at least get this one track so you know what I'm on about.

Tomorrow I'll give you three albums to make up the balance.

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one track - complete album (56:31)
available here

Steve Reich's significant contribution to minimalism involves his use of pulses and phased patterns. Hence today's pick can be seen as a companion to Riley's "In C". It differs in being a set score for a set instrumental grouping (although since some of the 18 musicians need to double up on instruments it is recommended to use more). There are eleven sections based around cycles of eleven chords -- a great deal of harmonic development for Reich.

Composed between 1974 and 1976, it was immediately recorded for the ECM label -- a slab of vinyl I have listened to often. Though I haven't heard all the subsequent attempts, the original ensemble is definitive. They fully express the subtle development of the piece and encourage the shifting of listener attention from the regular mechanical pulse to the rhythms of human breathing that overlay it.

The influence of Balinese Gamelan is apparent, but this is a unique work of distinctive vision. And a piece of musical history you can own for a song.

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one track - complete album (45:32)
available here

Terry Riley's seminal "In C" presents each member of an ensemble with a sequence of 53 short musical phrases they must play in order and in the same tempo, but which they are free to start and repeat when they wish. Given the open-ended nature of the score and its suitability to different combinations of instruments, not to mention the pure fun in playing it, there's no surprise that many different recordings exist.

"In C" relies very much on that mainstay of minimalism, the pulse. Eighth notes in C are banged out for the entire duration and it is against this background that different rhythms and harmonic changes develop. If you enjoy Steve Reich (whom I'll feature next week) this will put you in heaven.

The interpretations I've seen range from a very brief 28:24 to 76:20, but I am most familiar with the original 1964 Columbia Masterworks vinyl, which clocked in at 42:10. The sound wasn't very good on that tinny recording, though the ensemble, including Jon Hassell and Stuart Dempster, was exemplary. (It's since been remastered for the 45th anniversary CD release and sounds fantastic.)

Unfortunately eMusic does not have the classic version, but you can choose from the Ensemble Percussione Ricerca, Shanghai Film Orchestra, Société de musique contemporaine du Québec or even a version for solo flute.

But I recommend Bang On A Can's version, recorded 1998, released in 2001. Compared with the original the tempo is slower, the timbre warmer and the pulse an octave lower. This all combines to create a mellow version than the original. Really you need both.

Or, get a few friends together, print off the score and give it a try yourself!

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one track - complete album (45:23)
available here

And speaking of process (see the last entry), here's Alvin Lucier. Though he has a good number of albums released, he remains relatively unknown outside academic circles, at least compared to his contemporaries in minimalism: Glass, Reich and so on. His work is largely about perception and acoustics, never more so than in the landmark "I Am Sitting In A Room" (1969).

In this piece a simple acoustical recipe is enacted before our ears... as the composer tells us exactly what he is doing. It is as much a science experiment as musical odyssey and in that lies its purity. One would think, therefore, that it could be made by anyone. But Lucier has this knack for making such a perfect piece on a given principle that no-one dare touch it again; a later work would be a mere shadow. (In some ways that is what I feel Basinski's work is.)

"I Am Sitting In A Room" also happens to be a profoundly intimate piece, in which Lucier references his own stuttering. That adds yet another dimension to the crystalline perfection on display.

The first time I heard this it changed my life. Give it a chance when you are chilled out. It may take you unexpected places.

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