Office Politics

Ibrahim "Office Politics"
format: album, released: 2003

review by Karl Mohr


Beyond the deluge of commercial music available today, there exists a fringe group of composers hanging loose on the edge of the solar system. But beyond these sonic wildernesses exists a further artlessness, a zone of integral sonic dismisslessness where integrity and even the relationship between human and music itself breaks down. For most people, this translates into "what the F*CK are you listening to?" For artlessists and semiotics majors and Stanley Kubrick fans and the dedicated people who legitimately want to see music crushed to a pulp, this zone is a welcome, inviting space. Ibrahim seems to come from this space and wants to send us into it.

With an obscure hand-written note detailing a mental breakdown to robothood caused by the corporate office environment, the simple suggestion on the reverse: "Just ask Keith. He knows."

Ibrahim vanishes without a trace, cooks without a taste: mostly there is no music in the traditional sense at all here. There is the odd spoken word sample, the odd copyright infringed music riff, Jello Biafra bits and tattered hip hop beats squelched to shreds - but mostly this is non-music of and for the new electronic generation, bleepcore, art bloop.
In a sense, this is a very exciting time, artistically, not completely unlike the turn of the last century; again, people are approaching expression with renewed vigor and passion -- even when it is passionlessness.

What knocks this audio art into the strange space that lives between the work of the electroacoustic masters and Kid 606 is the unerring insistence upon not locking up to a click. There aren't really drums or rhythmic clusters/organization on this record. Twenty years ago, people were fascinated by the new forms of synthesizers emerging - now people thrill to the sounds of their computers uttering impossibly shredded audio manipulations and plug-in destructions. The new glitch unrock doesn't mind popping cut points, couldn't care less about major label headspaces, wishes the death of vinyl records and compact discs both. Ibrahim preaches the gospel of the musical abstract in apathetic tones with industrial coldheartedness and musique concretedness. The bitter non-tango of "Fricatives" instructs the jazzlessness of modern moral codelessness and etiquettelessness pressing to the chestlessness of robots. Some of this audio utterance sounds more like a manufacturing plant running smoothly than anything
remotely musical. And not in the normal industrial music way, either.

Is it good? "Who cares" is probably the proper answer, and that comes neither with snide nor with intellectual snobbery. Ars Electronica would probably give it four gold stars. Jello Biafra wouldn't comment. Bono would hate it. Tigerbeat6 Records would probably sign it.

People would run screaming, probably because they resonate so strongly with the liner notes and these grey abstract tones. For the people who like this kind of thing, and there are tonnes of them, the sonic developments and timbral manipulation/use are clever. The DSP weirdness is exciting and stimulating.
Cranked up really loud in large, empty metal buildings would be the optimum venue.

For absolutely random sonic glitch-art to set you off on a very strange headspace, strap on the headphones and get minimal with Ibrahim.