Francisco López - Nowhere Short Pieces 1983 To 2003 (10CD Box)

Francisco López should be a well know name for most people who has listened to noise for a little while now. I have to admit that I haven't heard too many records of his, so I decided I should get me the Box set "Nowhere Short Pieces 1983 To 2003", released on Blossoming Noise and Gender-less Kibbutz in 2008. The release comes as a standard 10 CD box, but there's also a special edition limited to only 100 copies where you'll get a pin + a 5" vinyl as extras. I do have the special edition, but I decided to review just the CD's as it covers a wider audience and more importantly, I have an auto-return on my turntable so I haven't had the time to enjoy the vinyl yet.

But let's get started, and as a contradiction to the Hijokaidan box, I'm not gonna do a one and one CD sum up here. The reason why I decided to do it as a whole is because I think it should be listened to that way. I know it's a collection of various pieces from a time period of as much as 20 years, but still, I think it works as whole. I usually have a hard time listening to "concentration music" on records and especially for many hours at a time. I think it's much easier to put on some of that good ol' harsh noise and sit back and relax and let the noises wash away everything else. I like combining the listening experience with other activities, and I find that hard when I feel I have to pay more attention to the music that takes away my focus from what I do on the side. Francisco López makes music that could easily have been a focus-stealer, but it's not. I have no idea what the average dB on this record is, but it spans from complete silence to the very opposite, and I had a few episodes where I had to check if the disc was still playing or not. It's a situation that you may find absurd, especially if you're not used to silence being used as an effect to intensify the listening experience even more, and most of the times I hear silence for as long as this I fall out of it. But here do we have an artist who can really master the most important tool in any noise, namely silence. I didn't get bored once during the ten hours the box lasts, and even though the truth is that I had to walk up to the speakers once in a while to see if I could hear anything at all, I think this was a fantastic listening experience. The intensitivity and excitement of every minute of this box made me really happy, and I couldn't wait putting the next disc on the stereo as soon as possible after each disc was over.

Before you now think that I'm contradicting myself on the statement that I don't like records that takes away the focus of any other activities, this is not what I've tried to say here. I had no problem doing other stuff while listening to the music. In a strange way I feel that I managed to absorb all the elements in a subconscious way and listen to the easier parts as I usually listen to music. And also since so many of the silence-parts (most of which has more lurking in them than you would know) lasts for quite long periods, I learned quickly to work with it.

Well this has been quite a scratch at the surface, and maybe more of a look into my personal feeling while listening to the music rather than a review of the music itself, but what should I say if I decided to do just the music. With a few exceptions on the latter discs there's not much more to say about the music than it's a combination of silence and different pitched white noises, and if that's all that would've been said I don't feel I'd get the message across on what it's actually like. 'Cause it's good. It's really good, and I don't think this is a release that would just be sitting in the shelf gathering dust in the future. I'm looking forward to listening to it on a headset, on a different stereo, but most of all, just to get through it again. And when I get some good speakers on my computer, I'll definitively load all discs and take a full day's listen. It's like a ten hour piece, but never is it too long. ...and most importantly, there's nothing to get. I'm tired of explaining people who try to "understand" noise that there's nothing to get. Just sit down, enjoy, and listen like any other record. Just let your ears adjust!