Ok, I know that this is all about music reviews, not packaging reviews, but sometimes, there’s more to a release than simply music. Florian Hecker’s ‘Speculative Solution’ is more than just music: a CD housed in a beautifully-designed box and accompanied by a 160-page book containing three essays, in both English and French and five 5mm steel ball-bearings, this is a package, of which the musical element is only a part.
The book, printed on tissue-fine vellum, is an intellectually stimulating work, with Quentin Meillassoux’s ‘Metaphysics and Extra-Science Fiction’ - in which he draws on the theories proffered by Harold Bloom and Emmanuel Kant in his discussion if (Exra) Science Fiction - proving to be thought-provoking read. Alongside Robin MacKay’s essay ‘This is This’ and Alie Achaye’s ‘The Real Future’, this is more than your regular CD inlay, and while compact in size, it’s truly immense on ideas.
It’s testament to the theoretical and musical complexity of Florian Hecker’s work that such scholarly writers have considered it appropriate to contribute works that are far from populist to a CD booklet, and given the nature of the release, it’s easy to give the essays and the music equal billing. Is it a mistake to do so? I would say not. After all, music is a cerebral phenomenon, and often listeners respond to music on a subconscious level, in a more primal fashion than to the written word, and it’s only when the words and the sounds are taken in conjunction that it’s possible to truly appreciate just how multi-faceted ‘Speculative Solution’ is.
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The music – doubling layers of electronic blips, beeps and bounces that shift and mutate and contrive every which way to disorientate, to baffle, bewilder and at the same time to engage – is a cerebral experience that functions as much (if not more so) on a theoretical, exploratory level as a musical one. As such, the ‘music’ itself might not be a spectacular or life-changing experience in itself, and for many, it will be unremarkable, even baffling or irritating. But to those who seek such microcosmically experimental electronica, and who are interested in the theory of musicology and the avant-garde, this set, taken as a single multisensory extravaganza, will be a fascinating and invaluable addition to their collection.
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