/dadahack/ : a biography (aka a press release) by paul morley
the routes to completing a piece of music therefore combine the mental, the
physical, the metaphysical, the airport, the train, the car, random
architectural spaces and the studio – and their music is very much a soundtrack
to such a combination, the idea of a music that solidly exists in everyday
reality and also tentatively vibrates around the edges, a music that is made up
using bits and pieces, parts and remants of the past, resent and future which
are pieced together using keyboards and screens to create a fixed, free sound
that is specially organised to be heard via club speakers, noise cancelling
earphones, televisions, laptops, in-car sound systems, smart phones,
advertisements and radio.
tap3, the new collection of codes/pulses/sounds/voice and electronic settings to be released by /dadahack/, is both an album and not an album, and will therefore be available as both a thing and a thing that is not a thing. you will be able to download the finished sounds to add to your play lists and alert the rest of the world about, and you will be able to buy it as an innovative piece of product that, in honour of /dadahack/ sources, to celebrate the mysterious, practical type of physical formats that electronic music was once released on, looks as though it is a cassette. tap3 the physical thing you can hold in your hands and explore is a combination of romantic found object and specialised industrial product that took many months to conceive, design and manufacture. it appears to be something that might appear in a 23rd century museum of earth's pop culture history that got it slightly wrong – /dadahack/ have created a personal history as though the cassette was invented after the ipod.
if a group like /dadahack/ existed, nostalgic for a certain time and place when
electronic imaginers lusted for change, and restless for the future to really
take hold, it would be right and proper that they release their debut album as a
lovingly assembled cassette. to some extent, this is what they have done – and
indeed the physical piece of /dadahack/ can be played as a cassette, although,
as if it is a cousin once or twice removed of dr.who, and something he would
have as part of his collection inside the tardis, it also plays itself. it needs
no machine for the tap3 sounds, made because of machines, to be released and
heard. /dadahack/, because they thought about it, and discussed it via the
various forms of communication that now exist, have composed and assembled an
album of music that exists on its own terms, and exists to listen with careful
consideration, or as you pass through from one place to another moment, and
which exists as something that is a soundtrack to its own physical existence.
tap3 is a souvenir of a fading time when music was only finished when it
appeared on an actual object, and an acceptance of a future where music is
finished as soon as it is let go into the cloud above/below/all around us.
if there really was a group called /dadahack/ intelligently exploring the role
of the modern pop group privately and in public, calculating what they will look
like when they play live, hiding behind walls living in the shadows as they
collaborate with each other and others and invent new shapes and sizes,
developing new forms of product to release their music on even as they
distribute it online making it something else altogether, then /dadahack/ would
be exactly that group. to some extent, /dadahack/ are from london and stockholm,
and/or they are from everywhere, and/or they are from nowhere. they can be
enjoyed wherever you are, danced to in company or listened to in isolation,
whether you're moving or still, up late or up early, experienced as a thing, and
as no thing at all.
that's 21st century entertainment for you.
more detail : here