Various Artists

2005 release  ** "Compiled by @c's Miguel Carvalhais, Essays on Radio: Can I Have 2 Minutes of Your Time? brings together 39 artists from the experimental electronica scene, paying tribute to or drawing inspiration from the oldest electronic media. Each piece is exactly 120 seconds, which creates a rather frantic pace; the listener soon loses track of whose contribution will play next and the music turns into a nearly uninterrupted continuum of juxtaposed sonic statements. The artists touch base with everything related to radio transmission, from the otherworldly distance of the shortwave band to the inane banter of AM stations and the triteness of commercial FM music. Number stations, white noise, and other haphazards of the dial all feed the artists' computer software. The material presents a diverse range of approaches, from Tilia leaving one of George W. Bush's speeches nearly intact ("Doublethinktank III: We Did Our Duty") and Autodigest's runoff groove symphony ("After the Orgy") up to complex arrangements of radio samples and electronic textures, and yet the listener comes out of these 78 minutes with a certain feeling of excessive homogeneity. Half of the tracks could be wrongly attributed to a number of contributors. The roster of artists represents a large piece of the sound art/experimental electro field, including the complete Crónica roster and most of Sirr's artists, alongside higher-profile names such as Pita, Pimmon, General Magic, Freiband, Pure, Stephan Mathieu, and John Hudak."