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Village Voice

“The guru of the synclavier has released a couple of new works, but mostly old pieces that hadn’t been available in decades.”

The guru of the synclavier has released a couple of new works, but mostly old pieces that hadn’t been available in decades. Appleton’s pieces stand apart from electro musics’s technology-driven history, often with refreshing, purposeful naïveté. In 1969 he made a piece called Newark Airport Rock by recording the answers of passing strangers to his question, “What do you think about the new electronic music?” That’s here with its 1996 sequel, in wich the best answer is “I don’t know what your talking about, I’ve just come from England.” The early works using ethnic music and environmental sounds seem timely in today’s sampler-driven scene, and I like the dreamy simplicity of the synthetised In Medias Res. Naturally, the disc ends with the once famous Chef d’œuvre of 1967, based on a Chef Boy-ar-dee TV commercial.

Originally published by Village Voice.Read it on Village Voice

10 other reviews

Sonomu

“A startling piece of digital composition and yet another example of Appleton’s warmth and irrepressible humanness…”

Earwaves

“… a beautiful recording of computer music…”

Splendid E-Zine

“Jon Appleton has been a central figure in electroacoustic music for close to 3 decades now. Contes de la mémoire is sort of like his “Greatest Hits” compilation — a collection of ten electronic pieces from throughout his career.”

CMJ (College Media Journal)

“Jon Appleton has been composing and constructing electronic music since the early ’60s, and a professor at Dartmouth for nearly as long.”

Option

“The popularity of computer music being what it is, even a distinguished electronic musician/composer like Appleton is heard largely on compilations or in retrospectives like this one, with selections spanning 30 years of artistic labor.”

Outsight

“This CD begins and ends with random street interviews on computer generated music. The techniques employed are varied as the answers of the interview participants.”

The War Against Silence

“Jon Appleton’s Contes de la mémoire, takes a much less abrasive approach to electroacoustic music. Until a giant, sadistic, gong-playing praying mantis infiltrates the album toward the very end, carrying a frazzled television set, most of these pieces sound like Eno, Dr.”

Musicworks

“American Jon Appleton and Brit Jonty Harrison are pioneers of electroacoustic music, and the pivotal moments of their enterprising work are marvellously captured on these two retrospectives issued by the empreintes DIGITALes label.”

Artefakt

“Jon Appletons Lebenslauf wirkt mächtig. Er wird als Mitglied einer Gruppe Forscher, die das Synclavier hervorbrachten und aufgrund seines weltweiten Engagements um die Elektroakustik gewürdigt.”

Computer Music Journal

“Contes de la mémoire (Memory’s tales): a very appropriate title, considering the eclectic content of this compilation of tape works by Jon Appleton.”