Thursday, February 16, 2006

this is not a test

Emergency Broadcast Network were a group of visual arts folks from rhode island school of design who meshed multimedia with music...well more like they made borrowed media samples into music. they were one of the first local bands i became aware of when growing up. initially featuring co-founder Josh Pearson (the other fellow being technician Gardner Post), well dressed and barking rhetoric surrounded by video image samplers, the group eventually employed a dj (Ron O'Donnell), the resulting output sounded something like cnn soundtracked by techno and on some weighty drugs. in the early ninties they took the show on the road, even stowing away on the lollapalooza tour, following it in their outfitted vehicle that is somewhat reminiscent of the ghostbusters station wagon. the following year the group gained notoriety for their Behavior Modification single, which included spliced video that presented the elder Bush, in the waning years of fighting in kuwait, breaking out a rendition of "We Will Rock you." it impressed enough for U2 to tab the video as well as some of the bands other material for the opening of their Zoo tour. in 1995 they released their only full-length album, Telecommunication Breakdown, on tvt records. these days every other cd you buy seems to have some kind of video extras on. well the E.B.N.'s album had cd-rom content and came with a floppy disc, making it quite ahead of it's time. the album brought about several notable contributers including Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, Grandmaster Melle Mel and Meatbeat Manifesto's Jack Dangers, who produced the affair. last i heard members where now doing video for other artists. partly it's surprising that they didn't keep at, but given all the impending copyright issues that come with their form of innovation, maybe not. their album holds up quite well ten years after it's release. the three videos on the floppy are quite interesting still as well.

E.B.N. "Electronic Behavior Control System"

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