Music Arcades: Philippe Petit & Friends: (Reciprocess +/VS.)

This CD is pretty new; it came with the March edition of The Wire. So, to listen to it for Music Arcades, I had to break the cellophane seal.

It's interesting (to me, and about 15 other people in the world) how quickly these new releases ripple round the online metadata world and where they start. I'm consistently impressed by how comprehensive RateYourMusic is — that they include 22-year-old Peel Session cassettes, for example. And they've already got nine ratings for this, relatively obscure, release. I count Musicbrainz as more definitive, because every new submission has to be peer-checked with evidence that it actually exists, but it's correspondingly slower and less comprehensive… but paradoxically they seem to have the wrong title for this CD (it's still under review, and I would edit it myself, but I'm not entirely confident of the title myself). Last.fm is ahead of the game: not only do they have the full album to play on demand, they also have this account of it:

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Marseille-based BiP_HOp label, label boss Philippe Petit has put together a new 80 minute piece of music that features input from a host of underground music masters. [Reciprocess: +/vs.] contains exclusive music by Aidan Baker, Chapter 24, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Simon Fisher Turner, Klangwart, Douglas Benford, Martkovo, Bela Emerson, Kumo, Eugene S Robinson, Severin 24, Jason Forrest, Lydia Lunch, Jean-Hervé Peron, Strings Of Consciousness, Sybarite, Jesu and dDamage.

I reckon someone from the label or The Wire must have entered that data — after all, the latter's office is only a ten minute walk from Last.fm; they probably drink together all the time.

So, where were we? The music? Often these experimental collaborations are a dog's breakfast, but, blow me, if this one isn't really rather wonderful. Astonishing how it's come out with just the right balance of consistency, or albumness, and variety. The Simon Fisher Turner piece is lovely. I wasn't expecting to like Lydia Lunch's contribution, yet it's very effective. It feels wrong, though, to pick out individual pieces, because the whole thing flows so coherently. Sure enough, it drops off about two thirds of the way in, but then it's longer than many double albums and they mostly fade at some point.

Remind me to dig this one out again. It captures in a nutshell (a square cardboard nutshell) the reason why I kept up my sub to The Wire and dropped my sub to The Word.

If you Google "Philippe Petit and friends" you seem to get lots of torrent files for downloading the album. I'm assuming, as this is a promotional CD, that these are authorised. (Correct me if wrong.)