Math

So - as I said, music is dead, or at least like our sun its currently slow to recover from a low point in its activity cycle... but I'm willing to believe it may come around, and I think I may have located one of those "green shoots" so celebrated by President "Barry-O". And for all you electronic music bitchez out there, this would have to be about as close to "classical" electronic music as you can get.

This post comes from an unlikely source - the BBC's Digital Planet podcast. Where recently they did a show featuring a tour of the UK National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. There they explored many very old computers, including the first ever "electronic programmable computer". Simpson's fans will dig the "electric internet" meme immediately - but this is for real - the first ever "electronic computer" - you can see photos on the show page. The Colossus computer - one of the feature instruments from the music on this post - was a code breaking computer used by the British during the Second World War to decrypt intercepted messages from Hitler to his generals.

"The prototype, Colossus Mark 1, was shown to be working in December 1943 and was operational at Bletchley Park by February 1944. An improved Colossus Mark 2 first worked on 1 June 1944, just in time for the Normandy Landings. Ten Colossi were in use by the end of the war."

So - what does this have to do with music?

Well, recently an electronic artist that goes by the "handle" (?) of pixelh8 (i.e. pixel-hate, also see MySpace) did an album featuring machines from the UK National Museum of Computing - and its not actually too bad. The album was called Obsolete?. It recently played live at Bletchley Park to a packed house, and is now available on iTunes.

My personal favourite track off the album is Then Goto 1980, for its musicality and its title (hooray BASIC!), and so that's the track I'd nominate. But I'd call special attention to the track Math, because I think its also solid, and a track highly befitting of the CDC's founder... ;-) And really if you call yourself a computer geek, or a fan of electronic music, this is probably an album you should own...

Enjoy!