by Jason Coffman [Anaphylaxis]
D-503- I'm Feeling Puffy (mp3.com)

Andrew Johnson, the mastermind behind experimental/noise entity D-503, doesn't seem to like this album very much.  It's described on his web site as "the height of my self-indulgence" and other such phrases.  It's not hard to see why Johnson views this album in such a light: it consists of 12 tracks and about an hour of sounds generated by a Puff Daddy cd he found lying on the side of the road.  However, as simple as the source may be, Johnson does an excellent job of pulling intriguing sounds out of the skipping, stuttering noises caused by wear and tear on a fragile compact disc's surface.

The skipping of a compact disc has been used in some other works of the past few years, most notably by German outfit Oval.  The difference is that where Oval is more interested in creating lulling soundscapes from their defaced discs, D-503 seeks to present the sounds in a much different manner.  Occasionally, the source material sneaks in for a fraction of a second (most notably the vocal microsnippets on track #1), and this album is often quite harsh.  The skipping disc is just as likely to create violent sounds reminiscent of large metal machines banging away or drummers quietly, carefully beating organic drums with their bare hands or the screaming of a great, terrifying beast.

What separates I'm Feeling Puffy from most harsh noise is its quasi-musical nature, another side effect from the source material. The skipping cd will often stick in a strange, contorted rhythm; it is this fact that makes the album particularly listenable amongst the field of harsh, formless noise acts currently grinding out album after album of screech.  Well worth a listen!

By Phil Legard of Xenis Emputae

D-503 - I'm Feeling Puffy
Although Andy is keen to emphasise that he doesn't own the Puff Daddy CD that this was created from and calls it his most self indulgent release, 'I'm Feeling Puffy' is a damn good exercise in rythmic noise cut-ups. You'd never have guessed the source of the distorted binary beeps and rumbles that make up the twelve tracks on this CD. Not harsh, but dissonant in the extreme and definitely enjoyable even once the novelty of the sound source has worn off.