Field recording is a practice that is both limited and unlimited in its simplicity: observe, record, present. Entirely singular to the genre is the fact that the object(s) and/or event(s) being captured comprise the majority of a recording’s artistic essence, rather than the artist’s own perspective or contributions. But now, especially with the telescoping downward spiral of irony constantly being accelerated by a post-internet culture, many purely documental works released these days do not purport to be either intriguing or informative—they simply exist, near-moot artifacts of something that doesn’t really matter, but occurred nonetheless. Kino is an artist who never seems to stop releasing music (a query of the “Kino” creator field in Internet Archive yields over eight hundred results, and it’s only one of many aliases and side projects), much of which seems to not give two shits whether anyone actually listens to it or not. Strewn between various nature recordings and contact mic examinations are the many entries in the Playing series, in which the artist simply records themselves playing a classic DOSBox shooter (e.g., Catacomb 3-D: The Descent, Strife, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.) for anywhere from two to over fifteen minutes.
Many of these releases don’t offer much beyond that, but even with such profound conceptual humility there’s an implicit argument being made for the value of virtual sonic ecologies along with “real” ones, something that’s been explored more deeply by Network Glass (Twitch, Exercise of Whatever), Graham Dunning (Panopticon), Kelly Ruth (Simulacra), and others. The most recent installments, Playing Powerslave: Build Engine Version (Level 2: Dendur) and Playing Blood: One Unit Whole Blood (E1M2: Wrong Side of the Tracks) with the Fan on, are some of the best so far and introduce new delights with the help of the longer-form approach, especially the latter, which pulls the sonic lens back to include the sounds of the fan and the controller. There are enough ingredients for a healthy helping of unusual ambience, but the triviality is ever-present; it’s hard to settle into a soundscape when NPCs are screaming in cartoonish agony the whole time. Which of course, if you’ve been paying attention, is the point—if there even is one at all.
Noise Not Music 