Famous for his examination of unusual and exotic instrumental sounds, here Mauricio Kagel focuses on the most mundane of sound materials. While attending a music trade show, Kagel was taken by the many levels and orbits of sound activity emanating from the various booths and stages. In 'Playback Play' (subtitled 'News from the Music Fair, A Radio Piece') he has arranged a spatially sensitive tableau of crowd noises, sales pitches and fragments of the sort one hears in music store show rooms, along with snippets of scales and arpeggios, and little tunes played on electronic keyboards. All of these come together to create a sort of kaleidoscopic audio vérité in which sonic events seem to appear, overlap, collide and disappear freely without the burden of a narrative.
