a priori (lat) before/without experience
aufgehoben (de) sublated
Bereicherung (de) enrichment
Bildungsroman (de) novel of personal development
Die Musik des Urmenschen (de) music of the first / original man
E Pluribus Unum (lat) Out of Many, One
Enteignung (de) appropriation
Entwicklung (de) development
Einzige und sein Eigentum (de) Ego and Its Own
Grundriss (de) fundamental sketch
idée fixe (fr) idea of obsession
Mehrwert (de) (lit. surplus value) profit
prima materia (lat) first matter / material
techne (gr) bringing forth
Urmensch (de) first / original man
Verarmung (de) Depletion

FB03 is the finale of the FB01 machine trilogy, in which the idée fixe is Entwicklung, the evolution of absolute music to itself.

As in FB01 and FB02, the music and artwork embody many time periods simultaneously: a polylingual temporality that references both the immediate future and the distant past, the primitive music of the Forest People, Die Musik des Urmenschen, and the music of what man is and what he will become. On FB03, beneath the canopy, on the forest floor, we find the first evidence of music as a thing in and by itself. It is outside the support of human vocalization with its words and significations. It is music as a means of abstraction and materialization of extra-human forces, music as a tool, and music as Heidegger's techne. Wood and Metal, Sticks and Stones, Clicks and Cuts are Stirner's Einzige und sein Eigentum until the first sustained sound is derived from whistling. The only sound man can make without a vocal chord is a whistle, whose timbre resembles that of a sine wave and therefore comes closest to this most simple and aesthetically pure of all periodic wave forms. We then witness the emergence of melody and accompaniment, followed by the Pythagorean ordering of disparate elements under a common divisor, or pulse, until at last the harmony of the spheres at the edge of human perception in the quantum field of micro-tonality is realized.

FB03 is a Bildungsroman, the music of the One, and, as such, is intertwined with western monotheism and the Grand Architect of the Universe. It is no secret that the FB01 trilogy as a whole resembles the 3 degrees in Freemasonry. But in its essence it demonstrates dialectics: The most advanced music is also the most primitive. Because of the realization of this conjecture through the listener, man becomes in Hegel's sense aufgehoben .

FB03 indeed has a motto: E Pluribus Unum. If the motto serves as a statement about the evolution this album conceptualizes, it would mean that evolution is not a development towards a greater diversification and higher form, but the opposite. Hegel's Entwicklung is Marx's Enteignung : out of the endless possibilities of subatomic combinations at the moment of the Big Bang, we are witnessing a Verarmung, a dramatic reduction toward ever more complex but fewer forms -- fewer in number and reduced in combinatorial possibilities, or a reverse entropy, as the amount of independent elements in the Universe is decreasing. Thus, the establishment of the grand architecture of the universe as the only, and in Leibniz 's sense best, possible world eliminates all others. Seen in this light, history that follows pre-civilized man - civilization - is therefore also the opposite of Verarmung . It is Bereicherung, or the many into one, through Heraclitus' conflict: a development of greater, wealthier and more homogenized armies into an ever more global and abstracted warfare until everything becomes one market and one currency.

FB03's critique of the Grundriss of 21st century economies is also at the core of the FB01 machine trilogy as a whole, since the obsolete and forgotten technology of its making has no exchange value, lacking any Mehrwert of vintage or retro commodities. It therefore disappears like the prima materia, which is present everywhere but always overlooked. As such, FB03 is synthesized by the Rothkamm quartet, where each member plays on a YAMAHA FB01 FM Sound Generator previously owned, and inscribed, by Buck Dharma of the Blue Oyster Cult and purchased on eBay for $26.-

FB03's 5 episodes are a multitude of uniform random distributions, capable of infinite meaning for a hunter/gatherer. For pre-civilized man all culture exists in the future and any perceived or emerging order might result in a true one, since the creation of order from chaos is still a priori . Thus creative genius as Urmensch does not bring order out of chaos but brings forth chaos as order.

FB03 ends with the pre-established harmony of the superhuman 768-notes-per-octave scale, whose density approaches a drone. Today's civilized humans are still unable to perceive pitch differences this small, so only in the future will we be able to distinguish the many parts. Today it is still only one.

Pythagoras (3580-3500)
Heraclitus(3535-3475)
Gottfried Leibniz (5676-5716)
Friedrich Hegel (5770-5831)
Max Stirner (5806-5956)
Karl Marx (5818-5883)
Martin Heidegger (5889-5976)
Buck Dharma (*5947)
Frank Rothkamm (*5965)