Mice World Tour

MICE World Tour is a diverse blend of music that are selected from a thirty thousand mile travel around the globe. The album features songs that showcase the many cultures and environments of the world, using an even greater variety of instrumental and electroacoustic sounds. MICE is directed by Matthew Burtner, who specializes in interactive media and ecoacoustics, elements which are prevalent throughout the entire album. The World Tour album could be seen as two unique sections: the eight movements of the piece World Radio Quilt and the rest of the album. World Radio Quilt is a compilation of radio noises, feedback, speakers, and music from all over the world while the other songs are a combination of instrumental and computer generated sounds. These two sections have a different focus within the realm of technosonic music and have different reasons why the section is enjoyable. World Radio Quilt is deeply rooted within the "musique concrete" ideology of electronic music. Musique concrete, or concrete music, is a style that focuses on using audio samples from the "real" world, whether these are common noises, human voices, or any other sort of sound. World Radio Quilt illustrates this by sampling from live FM radio stations from regions of the world, including Dakar, Walvis Baia, Straights of Gibraltar, Cadiz, Casablanca, Cape Town, and Shanghai. A very small portion of the eight movement piece is instrumental music; for example, for a few seconds, you can hear the introduction of Maroon 5's Can't Stop. The rest of the piece is feedback from changing the stations, sound effects and fanfares that are used in radio shows, and announcers of shows and stations addressing the audience. World Radio Quilt is a solid example of musique concrete. Audiences will value World Radio Quilt for different reasons. The piece is very avant-garde, having no defined key or time signature. Those who have a taste for the avant-garde style music will enjoy the piece; others will find it difficult to find the elements that makes this a song. This piece is also difficult to have as ambience or background music because the frequent channel changing will always shift the listeners' attention back to the song. What makes this a great piece for all audiences is the element of humor. While the collection of random in itself is funny sounding in itself, some sound bites stand out. For example, the Cape Town movement features a man who is reading what sounds a texting conversation between two people: "*beep* I need help moving the couch *beep* But I'm getting ready for the party... sadface *beep* Come help me or there will be no party *beep* sigh...." There are several other memory quotes that pop out and will cause a smile or a giggle to emanate from a listener's mouth. While the musical qualities of the piece will be cherished by those with a taste of avant-garde, every listener will welcome the humorous aspects of it.The songs that are not part of the World Radio Quilt blend musique concrete and instrumental music. One of the electroacoustic elements in the album is the use of nature. Sandprints, using microphones buried in the sand, Anemoi, containing sounds of the wind on the Altantic Ocean, Kanja, utilizing underwater hydrophones in the Indian Ocean, and `A'aa, recording the flow of lava flowing out of an active Guatemalan volcano, represent the four elements of nature, rock, wind, water, and fire, respectively. Another element was the use of interactive media, such as the use of squeaky toys in Sxueak and the dancing of people in the sand during Sandprints. MICE mixes the musique concrete with the use of tradition musical instruments, which can be as simple as the whistling solo in Sandprints to the eight strings instruments from all regions of the globe in World Strings. The implementation of both musique concrete and traditional instruments gives the MICE World Tour a rich, unique sound.MICE World Tour offers a wide variety of songs, giving a listener the freedom to pick a song that really calls to them. For those who are looking for a light-hearted tune, Sxueak's use of squeaky toys creates a feeling of child-like nostalgia while Sandprints keeps it easy with the trouble-free whistling part. Anemoi, `A'aa, and Kanja are more calming pieces, using the environment and technology to create a musical ambiance. If a listener wants something that focuses on the orchestral or instrumental side of music, World Strings features an ensemble consisting of instruments from eight different countries and That Which is Bodiless uses a saxophone and percussion alongside the MICE computers. With each song having a unique tone and feel, MICE World Tour is able to connect to a wide variety of audiences.If you're looking for one song to download from this album, I'd highly recommend World Strings. The piece has the largest collection of musical elements, using strings instruments from eight different countries and computer generated sounds. By using the strings from multiple countries, MICE demonstrates how several different cultures can come together and create a piece that illustrates the universal love for music. The composition is simply inspiring, light yet majestic. I would love to see more songs that celebrate the differences and, more importantly, the similarities between cultures.MICE World Tour is wonderfully widespread in the selection of songs. Burtner and his MICE combine traditional instrumental music with the environment and recorded sounds. There is something on the album for everyone, whether you are a historian of "musique concrete," an instrumental or techno enthusiast, or just looking for something to brighten your day.

The album "MICE world tour" showed me a whole new world of electronic music; rather than my stereotyped robotic and futuristic music, electronic music can be soothing and entertaining and the first song in the album "Sandprints" is one great example. The piece" Sandprints" was performed primarily with electronic music accompanied with whistling. Electronics in this piece was primarily used to perform the background music while whistling was used for the main rhythm of the piece. Through out the whole piece, the main rhythm seemed to have stayed the same and repeating itself while various variations of the background music can be heard. In contrast to the soothing nature of the first piece "Sandprints", the second piece in the album "That which is bodiless" appears to be presenting a sad and gloomy atmosphere. With the composer using a lot of dissonant, inharmonic sound in the composition, tension and uneasiness was created, which was further accentuated by the adaptation of saxophone to as the main rhythm. Dissonant sound was used in much of this piece, as well as the other pieces through out the album; the use of dissonance could find its root in the beginning years of electrical music when Satie and Schoberg were experimenting and breaking away from the mainstream classical music in the early years of the 20th century. An aspect that I think is new and interesting in the "MICE world tour" album as well as the computer, techno music, would be the application and introduction of ecological, environmental ideas into music. For many of the pieces in the album was created using sounds that were collected from nature as if the nature is directly speaking, singing for us. "Sandprints" was composed using sounds collected by microphones buried in the sand, Anemoi burrowed sounds from the wind of the Atlantic, Kanja relayed on the sounds provided by the underwater hydrophones in the Indian Ocean while "'A'aa" inherited the voices of flowing lava and an active volcano. These sounds, sounds that most people would never have heard, were brought together by "MICE" from their 30,000 mile trip around the world, organically synthesized and presented us with their unique sounds. Encompassing in current issues and factors that are of global concerns, such as environment protection and awareness, would not only be good for breaking the stereotyping of techno/ computer music as always futuristic, strange, robotic or outer space, it may also be good in helping the genre gaining more attention. The incorporation of various sounds from nature would most certainly be impossible without the use of computer and electronics as an instrument and I suppose this is a very bold and interesting experimentation while brining fresh looks as well as possible expansion for the technological music. Although in my opinion, the various types of noises and dissonance sounds appeared to be the main rhythm of the album after the first piece "Sandprints", and are somewhat out of the scope of my music appreciation, though it is still impressive and stunning as well as mind boggling in learning that some of the pieces were created using sounds of nature. The "MICE world tour" had brought me a truly extraordinary new experience in the world of music.