IBM 1401 - A Users Manual [Digipak] - Johann Johannsson

...heard the fifth track of IBM 1401 - A Users Manual on Classic FM whilst channel hopping and demanded that the internet tell me more. I ordered the album and wasn't disappointed.

The album starts with some classical strings and some synth effects, before going into a sample taken from a recorded manual for the old IBM 1401 computers. These beasts required their own room and where the super-computer of their day. The artist Johan Johansson's ...
...Johan to make this piece, (apparently there is a dance to go with it but I've yet to find any videos of it on the internet).

The album then moves on as if the computer has now, like the one from Johansson's childhood, been outdated and replaced. The sampled voice-over is replaced by haunting sorrowful cries, again to the classical strings and synth effects before culminating in the fifth track 'The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned ... more

I heard the fifth track of IBM 1401 - A Users Manual on Classic FM whilst channel hopping and demanded that the internet tell me more. I ordered the album and wasn't disappointed.

The album starts with some classical strings and some synth effects, before going into a sample taken from a recorded manual for the old IBM 1401 computers. These beasts required their own room and where the super-computer of their day. The artist Johan Johansson's father used to maintain one in Iceland and it inspired Johan to make this piece, (apparently there is a dance to go with it but I've yet to find any videos of it on the internet).

The album then moves on as if the computer has now, like the one from Johansson's childhood, been outdated and replaced. The sampled voice-over is replaced by haunting sorrowful cries, again to the classical strings and synth effects before culminating in the fifth track 'The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned Black', in which we imagine the last thoughts of the dieing computer.

It's not a long album, and the second track with the majority of voice-over doesn't stand well alone, but the five tracks meld together effortlessly. It could be described as semi-classical/semi-modern ambiant music, but it deserves listening to rather than being background music like some ambiance can be.

Overall I can thoroughly recommend this, it is an excellently put together, cerebral album that'll take you away like nothing else I have encountered yet, and I've looked. 

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