The Awthum Empire

Charles Ditto, a UT educated composer, world music enthusiast, and music professor at Texas State, may seem a prosaic description of a veteran austinite. Yet there are still shades of Zolo that can be found bubbling around in all the chaotic greatness that was 1980s Austin. in this case an album released in 1987 which predates his college career. In Human Terms reveals a proto composer with a midi infatuation that informs his compositions on this album which has an austere minimalistic take on new age sounds and 16 bit interpretations world rhythms.

in reviewing this i hope to take on more of Austin’s older more unknown or esoteric, whose relics still find influence among the young and off beat. i found this record at Immortal Performance Records in their section of unsorted but unopened records. many of them they seemed to have in multiples and few looked familiar. so the idea that this town, being so dense with more mainstream musical history, still has layers of small press groups and projects that are teeming with weirdness and creativity, yet are gathering dust without extol.