System Error
This is an eleven track compilation CD, filled with some of Mike's favorite compositions from the late '80s through the mid '90s. Click on the individual title links below for more informations about the various pieces. You'll notice that "The Ocean" has no link below. That's because it is a rather zany instrumental cover of the Led Zeppelin song of the same name. The more intimately familiar you are with the original, the more you'll appreciate the humor of Mike's version.
"System Error"
"Song of the Badger"
"I Felt Whacko"
"Raymond's Electronium"
"Angels: Overture"
"The Ocean"
"Peace Dividend"
"Borneo"
"Circus Accident"
"Head Hunters"
"Office furniture from Outer Space"
Review
Keyboard Magazine - January 1998
Is System Error funk, electronica, cartoon or academic? At times any of the above. Combining musique concrète, analog synthesis, brass and woodwinds, radio broadcasts, and "found object performers", Olson weaves an intricate and perverse-yet-entertaining style of music. There are tributes to Raymond Scott, developer of the Electronium, and Carl Stalling, the Warner Brothers cartoon music composer. Not to be missed is the whacked-out instrumental rendition of Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean" from Houses of the Holy. In my book, if you cover Led Zep using guitars, saxes, trumpet, trombone, Minimoog, and other synths, you can do no wrong. - Mark Vail.