I Make Noise
Last year I self-released an hour-long bit of reductive sonic madness called Organelle (wearing my There Goes Neutro hat). It was originally an installment of a radio show on Iowa City Free Radio several years ago (when it was still over by Dirty John's), and it was a fun challenge. Every two weeks I had to produce an hour of original noise; it was a great way to hunker down and just make stuff.
Somewhere in the teens of shows ICFR picked up a program director who didn't think people who showed up consistently and on-time for their shows were punk enough, or something. So poof went the show. Organelle was made entirely from an advance frame noise from a Life Of Jesus filmstrip record. It was about two seconds long. I then set about chopping this two seconds into as many pieces I could before the cut lines started to blot each other out entirely.
Enter the instrument I know how to play better than any other: Winamp. With a few touches to the fade-in and out timing (barely thousandths of a second), I played the pieces on random for an hour and there you go.
A single hour-long track is too mean even for me. I hacked it into quarters, and here's the fourth one. I did nearly a dozen shows for ICFR, but some are more successful than others--laughing via a mike though a toy drum machine sounds awesome on paper. A couple others came out well, though, and I'll release those too, if only to get spiff covers from the guys.
You can get the disc via the legendary Aquarius Records. Plop "Organelle" into the search box (direct links aren't so doable) and read the review. A snippet:
Obvious references would be Jeck and Tetreault and Basinski, especially since the main component is record crackle, and damaged vinyl, and the arrangement is a looped assemblage of stuttering chopped up bits, like a rougher more raw Oval. But it's not just hiss and crackle, the first few seconds of music are also captured, sounding a bit circusy, even more so once they get looped up and tangled. Four long tracks, all movements in one epic and fractured soundscape.
Woozy, trippy, warped and warbly and definitely a bit psychedelic. Super cool!
Coming soon: Remrofsnart and the News.
Somewhere in the teens of shows ICFR picked up a program director who didn't think people who showed up consistently and on-time for their shows were punk enough, or something. So poof went the show. Organelle was made entirely from an advance frame noise from a Life Of Jesus filmstrip record. It was about two seconds long. I then set about chopping this two seconds into as many pieces I could before the cut lines started to blot each other out entirely.
Enter the instrument I know how to play better than any other: Winamp. With a few touches to the fade-in and out timing (barely thousandths of a second), I played the pieces on random for an hour and there you go.
A single hour-long track is too mean even for me. I hacked it into quarters, and here's the fourth one. I did nearly a dozen shows for ICFR, but some are more successful than others--laughing via a mike though a toy drum machine sounds awesome on paper. A couple others came out well, though, and I'll release those too, if only to get spiff covers from the guys.
You can get the disc via the legendary Aquarius Records. Plop "Organelle" into the search box (direct links aren't so doable) and read the review. A snippet:
Obvious references would be Jeck and Tetreault and Basinski, especially since the main component is record crackle, and damaged vinyl, and the arrangement is a looped assemblage of stuttering chopped up bits, like a rougher more raw Oval. But it's not just hiss and crackle, the first few seconds of music are also captured, sounding a bit circusy, even more so once they get looped up and tangled. Four long tracks, all movements in one epic and fractured soundscape.
Woozy, trippy, warped and warbly and definitely a bit psychedelic. Super cool!
Coming soon: Remrofsnart and the News.
posted by John Ira Thomas | 8:06 PM
2 Comments:
is five years old needs to be made into a movie.
I picture something very similar to that collection of public domain film clips that warned about mind control, or was it electromagnetic radiation? anyhoo. that's what i flashed to...
tuefel
I tend toward droney noise, it's true. So all we need is a movie to go with it. Hmm....
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