Christopher Penrose "American Jingo" Illegal Art 102 2000 (43:31)
American
Jingo (19:16)
MK/Ultra
(24:15)
Christopher Penrose is a thirty something Californian who has received degrees in music composition at UC San Diego and Princeton University. He currently resides in Japan and works as a researcher, composer and developer of audio software for Apple's Rhapsody operating system. The two 20 and 24 minute tracks on this disc are likely products of that software, possibly his image to sound program. Penrose is obviously making a statement on the Americanization of the world as the digipack features clever artwork by him of Stars and Stripes flags with the stars replaced by other nations flags and corporate logos. The title refers to 'one who vociferously supports one's country, especially one who supports a belligerent foreign policy'. No doubt a phenomenon he has experienced firsthand in Japan. The title track churns through countless processed samples and passages, far too many to detail or even identify, but most are seemingly random snippets of sound and music interspersed with several spoken statements: "here is what you think", "be a winner at losing", "I love my body", "she is America", etc. "MK/Ultra" features an 8 minute wavering synthetic drone, a panicked phone call to a radio station from a recently discharged soldier who believes aliens are among us (which also appears on the tail end of the latest Tool album), and a numbered list of unusual life lessons and suggestions delivered in a digitized voice culminating with "walk slowly, but kill that motherfucker if he tries to take your money" repeated ad nauseam. Penrose's compositions are just plain odd, both in content and juxtaposition, but also interesting with a well balanced mix of ambient, noisy, serious and humorous moments. Though, without the artwork I'd be somewhat puzzled as to what it's all about ...
Where did I get this cd? - promo.