About this archive
How this archive edition of the former RANDOM ACOUSTICS website was restored: what was kept as archived, what was removed, what was added and marked.
About
This site is an archive edition of the former RANDOM ACOUSTICS website as it stood between 2001 and 2008. It was restored from the copies of that website held by the Internet Archive. RANDOM ACOUSTICS is the independent label that the composer and pianist Georg Graewe founded in Cologne in 1993, with a programme of electronic music, contemporary chamber music and new jazz; its catalogue runs from RA 001 to RA 027.
The archive is not run by the label, by Georg Graewe or by any of the musicians, and it does not speak for them. It exists to keep the label's own pages readable and the catalogue easy to move through.
What was kept as archived
- The label's own texts: the home page, the label history and the introductions to the catalogue and history sections.
- The line-ups, recording lines and track lists of the 21 releases documented in the archived copies: 15 in the catalogue section and 6 in the history section. RA 006, 008, 013, 014, 016 and 019 have no release page in those copies.
- The liner notes: Georg Graewe's note to RA 023 and Steven A. Loewy's notes to RA 025 and RA 026.
- The biographies of nine musicians, as archived. They date from around 2000, and their present and future tenses ("currently", "will be released") refer to that time.
Names are spelled as printed, including the variants (Gratowski and Gratkowski, Riejseger and Reijseger, Russel and Russell). The indexes file each person under one spelling. The label text's "catalogue of some 24 productions" is likewise the figure as of the original text.
What was removed
Postal addresses, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, the order forms, prices, the dealer list and the designer credit. The archive offers nothing for sale.
What was added
All of this is new, and each page marks it as an addition:
- the musician index, with every player named in a line-up and the records each one appears on;
- the recording chronology and the venue index, built from the recording lines;
- a list of each musician's records on the label, on the nine artist pages;
- an "About this recording" summary on each release page, drawn only from the facts on that page;
- editorial articles, such as how to listen to free improvisation and the rooms where these records were made.
Images
Three kinds of image appear here. Some are original images preserved in the archived copies, such as the home page picture of a CD, a few covers and the photograph of John Butcher, which is credited to Susan O'Connor. Some are freely licensed photographs, each credited on the page where it appears. A few are generated atmosphere images, marked as generated on the page. Where a cover was not preserved, the release page says so.
Errors kept as printed
A few recording lines on the original pages repeat the line of another release. They are shown as printed, and the derived pages do not use them:
- The line "Recorded live at MUSEUM Bochum on October 4, 1992" belongs to RA 001. The same line is also printed on RA 017, RA 021 and RA 022. On RA 022 the release's own recording details follow in the next line, and those are the details the chronology uses.
- RA 020 carries the same recording line as RA 018.
The date on RA 005 is printed "10/5/1994", which can be read two ways, so the chronology gives only the year. Where the original is wrong or unclear, the archive shows what it says and adds no correction it cannot verify.
Image credits
Covers are the label’s artwork, shown as on the original website; scans of covers the archive did not keep come from Discogs and the MusicBrainz Cover Art Archive. Generated illustrations are captioned as such. Photographs from Wikimedia Commons are used under their free licences:
| Subject | Author | Licence | Credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frank Gratkowski | Schorle | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Photo: Schorle / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Georg Graewe | Michael Hoefner (Nomo), www.zwo5.de | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Photo: Michael Hoefner (Nomo), www.zwo5.de / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
| Gerry Hemingway | Hpschaefer (Commons user; source note: www.reserv-art.de) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Photo: Hpschaefer / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| John Butcher | Andy Newcombe | CC BY 2.0 | Photo: Andy Newcombe / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 |
| Martin Blume | Schorle | CC BY-SA 3.0 (multi-licensed: GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0/2.5/2.0/1.0) | Photo: Schorle / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
| Robert Dick | Hreinn Gudlaugsson | CC BY 4.0 | Photo: Hreinn Gudlaugsson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 |
| Thomas Lehn | Schorle | CC BY-SA 3.0 (GFDL, relicensed to CC BY-SA 3.0 via license migration) | Photo: Schorle / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
| Donaueschinger Musiktage 1954: prepared pianos on stage | Willy Pragher | CC BY 4.0 | Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Freiburg W 134 Nr. 039529 / Fotograf: Willy Pragher |
| LOFT in Cologne, Wißmannstraße 30 | Raimond Spekking | CC BY-SA 4.0 | © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons) |
| Kunstmuseum Bochum, the MUSEUM Bochum of the recording notes | Hans-Jürgen Wiese | CC BY 2.5 (multi-licensed: GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0 migrated, CC BY 2.5) | Photo: Hans-Jürgen Wiese / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5 |
| The Stadtgarten concert hall in Cologne | Raimond Spekking | CC BY-SA 4.0 | © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons) |