Rube Reviews

Miki Naoe is a shortwave radio player from Japan. Using this rather unconventional instrument, Naoe has created a true work of art with his latest full length album Solos. Split into two lengthy pieces Studio and Home, Solos starts off as what many would describe as regular radio static. The static doesn't stay around for long as short, harsh blasts of noise build up into a rhythmic dance of epic proportions. Screeches and high pitched tones start to speak to the listener in a foreign language only the performer can decipher. The skill of Miki Naoe really shines through and makes you wonder why there aren't more albums like this around? The second part of the album isn't as brutal as the first but still manages to pack a punch to the eardrums. Subdued, but still inventive, Home continues what we hear on the previous song with tones, static, and frequencies all battling it out for pride of place.  Ingenious and completely satisfying, Solos is already a contender for the best

by Ade Rowe   Experimentalism has always played a part in The Beatles recording methods. From the accidental guitar feedback at the start of 1964's I Feel Fine, to the white noise descent on the last three minutes of 1969's I Want You (She's So Heavy), The Beatles, along with their producer George Martin, constantly experimented with ways to push musical boundaries and break new ground in the recording studio. However, experimentalism in music wasn't a new creation that was birthed by The Beatles. There has always been a level of musical experimentalism existing in one form or another, The Beatles just injected it into popular music and thus created a new kind of sound. As far back as the 1910's, the futurist art movement, most notably, Italian painter Luigi Russolo, experimented with sounds and noises in the truest sense. Russolo wrote a manifesto entitled The Art of Noises, which posed the point that the future of composition laid within the industrial sounds and