All the Birds Were Anarchists is a collection of sketches by an improvising trio of laptoppers. If their music sounds particularly spontaneous for something made with computers, there's good reason. The group — Barbara Morgenstern, Mapstation's Stefan Schneider and Paul Wirkus — was born out of a 2002 tour where each artist performed solo; growing restless with the nightly show sequence, they began ending their sets with a group improvisation, and their loops gelled well enough to propel them into the studio, where improvisation remains at the heart of their practice.

Morgenstern's melodic piano lines run like a gold braid through many of the songs, and elsewhere a Rhodes or a spindly electric guitar takes the lead. But what's most interesting is the commotion in the background, as fleeting combinations of sounds make furtive walk-ons, deliver tossed-off lines that completely shift the direction of the drama, and melt back into the wings. There's something about acoustic loops — judging from Wirkus 'bio and artist's statement, he relies heavily on samples of strings and piano — that lends itself to this kind of Silly Putty play, elongating shapes and smooshing them back together, violently. You get ghost images where two… read more »