Customer Reviews

Ibm1401-A Users Manual

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For some reason or another, I held off on buying IBM 1401 - A User's Manual right away. The reviews that I read on the piece were somewhat spotty, and while I enjoyed Jóhann Jóhannsson's first two albums Englaborn and Viršulegu Forsetar, his more recent Dis album left me a bit cold. As it turns out, I was a bit dumb for not seeking out this album a little sooner, as it's another gorgeous modern classical entry from Jóhannsson.

The story behind the release is interesting, and definitely worth retelling, as Jóhannsson's father worked for IBM in Iceland roughly 40 years back when they got their first 1401 Data Processing System. Also a musician, his father managed to program the machine so that it emitted electromagnetic waves in patterns that could be picked up by radio receivers. When the machine was put out of commission and replaced roughly five years later, his dad gave it a little ceremony that included playing some of the music he'd written for it.

Those tracks were recorded, and Jóhann Jóhannsson discovered them a couple years back and using them as starting points which then developed into dance pieces in collaboration with choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir. Eventually, Jóhannsson. developed the pieces even further, filling them out with a full orchestra, and the result is this recorded album. "Part 1/IBM 1401 Processing Unit" opens the release very slowly, with a somewhat gritty sounding eight note melody from the IBM before an elegant string movement both accents the melody and fades away at times to leave it playing by itself. About halfway through, a ripple of cold electronics brings the piece to a high point before it closes in the same manner it began.

"Part 2/IBM1403 Printer" follows, and it's even more sparse and stunning, with ringing bell notes and soft strings juxtaposed with samples of maintenance instructions for the old printer itself. In combination with spectacular pacing, the odd musical pairing (along with some spectral blips and bleeps) makes for what might be the finest track of the release. Both "Part 3/IBM 1402 Card Read-Punch" and "Part 4/IBM 729 II Magnetic Tape Unit" both take on similar feels and find the album at its most grandiose in terms of orchestral instrumentation as huge swells of dramatic strings pull and tug at the listener while odd little electronic effects (like thunderous bass hits, glistening bells, and other scrambled voices) creep into the mix in places and keep things from getting too glossy.

With a vocodored voice, "Part 5/The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned Black," not only sounds a lot like "Odi et Amo" from his Englaborn album, but reminds one a bit of the slow, singing shutdown of the Hal 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a touching close to the technologically-touched classical release, and finds Jóhannsson back on solid ground after the aforementioned Dis. A great story behind it, lovely packaging, and another outstanding effort from this young composer.

(from almost cool music reviews)

I ran across this release almost by accident. It was reviewed in an obscure corner of a website I visit infrequently, and I'm not sure how I wound up there. I read the review and listened to the sample, and I had to have it.

Music fascinates me, and so does old technology. This album includes phantasmal electronic sounds recorded by placing a radio receiver next to, as you might guess from the title, the memory stack of an IBM 1401 computer. The IBM 1401, one of the first affordable business computers, was in service from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and the recordings were made by the composer's father.

The clinical computer background is overlaid by a warm, gentle, entirely human arrangement of strings. It challenges the listener to compare these two very different human acheivements, and to embrace the art in the technology while simultaneously acknowledging the technology in the art. This concept is brought into sharp relief on track three, where an unknown instructor dispassionately discusses the maintenance of the equipment, while the strings passionately celebrate their own limitless potential.

In summary, what we are left with is a brilliant commemoration of the multifaceted nature of human achievement, and a beautiful composition that puts the lie to the scholarly conceit that there are no great classical composers left in the world.

inspired by a computer,put your headphones on and your mind will do the rest,classical in style using voice and orchestra,it is a slow evolving dream like music in five movements,you may never hear any thing this ellegant again,two years on,i'm absorbed by it.

When I came across this album, I was extremely excited. I have over the last year or so become extremely fascinated with early computer and electronic musicians. My exposure has been limited mostly to more famous composers (Charles Dodge, Terry Riley, Jean Claude Risset, etc), and I was interested in hearing something conceptual, whose origins were less prominent. My anticipation was lots of primitive computer noise, and gritty pioneer work. While the original compositions may have been more similar to the aforementioned artists, this album is entirely different. The role of the computer tones and timbres is significantly downplayed, while the added classical string arrangements are given most of the foreground. There are some interesting samples taken from both computer signals and instructional recordings, but the strings really dominate the landscape. The album is pretty, nonetheless. Melancholy, and Grandiose; it seems like an appropriate soundtrack for a melodramatic war movie. Not an entirely bad thing. It's very soothing, and good to unwind to. Nothing too technical, or cerebral, but a pleasant piece of work.

Unless you live on quiet side street in Reykjavik or possibly a cobblestone cul de sac in Goteborg, you may have missed the early works of an Icelandic composer named Johann who mixes acoustic instruments with a syntehsizer in fond memory of...in fond memory of...erm, machines we have known (and loved) or, at least, known. In the case of IBM 1401, a pioneer leviathan of a computer that could fill a room....followed by his homage to the crank it yourself Model T and its successors...Fordlandia. You may ask yourself (or not) what is it about these machines that draws Johannsson's artistic ear, like a moth to a flame...and you may pass him by and go back alphabetically to the B aisle...pick up a Bjork CD, to show you don't bear any cultural bias against the little island nation in the North Atlantic...plus, I admit that I can't take my eyes off her album covers. Then driving home from the cd store, listening to the new or alternative sounds program on your favorite non-rock radio station, you may hear it...an organ, some strings...what is that...a synthesizer...who is that singing or speaking or trying to speak to us? and because it is new and ummm, different, you may dismiss it...or almost dismiss it...but not quite...you may find yourself fishing in the glovebox for a pen...wanting to note what this music is...who wrote it...and if you don't live on a quiet side street in Reykjavik or some suburb of Malmo...or even if you do, you may find yourself asking Johann who? still, if you end up purchasing either disc...(listen to IBM 1401 first if you can)...you will know how the moth feels...and, as a bonus, you can be glancing at your Bjork albums while listening to alternative Icelandic music that reaches way beyond the coastline of a tiny island nation.

First I was drawn in by the hypnotic last track (the only one with lyrics). Then I was intrigued by the name. And when I read the concept behind the album, I became obsessed with hearing it. But I was amazed that such a startling non-traditional idea could yield such a traditional work. I had read one review that dismissed previous critics' characterization of Johannsson's music as "filmic." The reviewer believed this was because modern listeners only relate to instrumental music as film scores. But that is hardly the case here. This DOES sound like a score in search of a film. As an evocative backdrop it might have been gorgeous. As a work of art it is disappointingly predictable.

When I first came across this album, the weird title. 'ibm I401, a user's manual' intrigued me. I thought, nahhh...not another (trying-too-hard) 'Intelligent B______ Music' of some sub-sub genre spawned by some sub-genre influenced by some genre fusing another genre kinda music!

Read the inlay. Its a concept album. The music comprises of melodies done using the first ever IBM computer (IBM I401 'T' Model) entered into Iceland in the year 1964. I thought I would be listening to bleeps & blobs. Played it. Intro seeps slowly, very much like Eno's Music for the Airpot kinda ambienic...accompanied by lush strings. Warm and evocative, not what I would have expected from an album of such concept.

There was a short synopsis on how Johannsson's father, the engineer who was the first to have brought in IBM I401 in Iceland, had tampered with the computer and created from it, the first few bars of melodies emitted via artificial intelligence.

In the inlay, Johann Johannsson wrote :


'When the IBM I401 was taken out of service in 1971, it wasn't simply thrown away like an old refrigerator. Instead it was given a little farewell ceremony, almost a funeral, when its melodies were played out one last time. This "performance" was documented on tape, along with recordings of the sound of the computer in this operation.'


That was really moving and warming. It seriously touched me right to the core. It tells human spirit, her interaction with the artificial intelligence she has created. The respect and her embrace of it. I am a believer in the relativeness of reality. The treatment of an object by the subject, directly projects the qualities of the latter. When we see an inanimate object as cold, it is because of our own coldness, our treatment of it. In nature, we cannot escape from the frame of subject-object bi-lateral relationship. In this case here, the spirit of humanity, the humane feeling to this first ever IBM computer in Iceland, was manifested when a personality was imbued to the computer, when we treated it like another being and gave it a final farewell. The requiem for IBM I401 was one for a realised dream of us. I am an agnostic, but if there was a God, isn't that what God has done when he created us human? When we feel or perceive a certain divinity within or perhaps around us, that divinity projects a possibility of the existence of a divine spirit somewhere out there or in us. Anyway, I don't believe in God. I am a humanist. I believe in the spirit of humanity. We have created machine, an artificial intelligence, that is born of intercourse between human ideas and human spirits. Its our child. Embrace.

If you do come across this album, get it. Its simply awesome.

Hands, down... This is one of the best releases of 2006. It's not just because it is 4AD either (I am a huge fan of the label. I wouldn't have discovered Jóhann Jóhannsson without them). The album is beautiful, haunting and mesmerizing. I also really appreciate the story behind the music (the cd has an explanation). Oh yeah, the cd design is also gorgeous!

This was my first experience with contemporary Icelandic composer Johann Johannson, and I was absolutely swept off my feet. This is a wonderful work that I felt was thick with nostalgia for a bygone era. Much of it sounds like past visions of the future -- looking back from today at what the future looked like in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The first movement, "IBM 1401 Processing Unit", starts with the original recordings of Johannson's father made by picking up radio waves from the IBM 1401 -- which was an early, punch-card-reading IBM mainframe computer. Johannson weaves beautiful string orchestrations in and out of these sine-wave-type notes. Maybe I'm imagining things, but the impression I had was of emotional family memories.

Movement 2, "IBM 1403 Printer", take a different tack altogeher -- chimes announcing readings from the printer manual, in a sonorous, echoey English accent. It sounds like high-tech PA announcements as envisioned in old science fiction films about the future. There are electronic, space-age sounds effects going in the background against gentle strings. Excellent.

The third and fourth movements, "IBM 1402 Card Read-Punch" and "IBM 729 II Magnetic Tape Unit", together form a slow string adagio with light background of electronic sounds and bells, with some snippets of voice that are barely audible -- like being too far away from the PA system heard in the previous movement to make out what they are saying. During the fourth movement things get a little darker with a low rumbling synthesizer setting the atmosphere and percussive industrial sounds (the sounds of magnetic tape reels rolling on the IBM 729 II?).

The finale, "The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned Black", is pretty remarkable. A vocoder-modified voice sings a single lyrical couplet over and over: "The sun's gone dim and the sky's turned black, Cause I loved her and she didn't love back". Strings, synthesizer and electric guitar in the background add to a dark atmosphere, but suddenly we hear a soprano and matching synthesizer note open up the black sky over anthem-like strings.

A very impressive piece of music that has certainly made me want to seek out more Johann Johannson.

Johan Johannsson is a creative and for its genre, fairly melodic "composer"/studio wizard. IBM 1401-A Users Manual is typical of his work but has an added loop of recorded excerpts from a technical manual for a long obsolete computer. The voice loop is very dead pan, and would be boring except in this context and in short bursts. If you are a fan of electronic music, this is worth repeat listens.