These came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got ’em. Here’s what I said about them back then (with some minor editing):
Most music is directed at your ears, feet or booty. Otomo Yoshihide aims for your cerebral cortex.
This Japanese experimentalist’s creations are closer to abstract sound sculpture than anything you’ll hear on the radio. Actually, if you did catch tracks like Modulation and Cathode, you’d think your radio was on the fritz. The former probes the tonal differences between traditional Japanese instruments and sine waves. The latter rearranges snippets of music in seemingly random order, at various speeds. Both tracks differ depending on volume and your position. The sound? Well, it’s somewhere between alien classical, the chaos of 12-tone composers like Edgard Varèse, and horror soundtracks. The point? As near as I can surmise, it’s about perspective, relativity and how no two people hear the same piece of music exactly the same. In other words, art, like beauty, is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.
