Compilation on two-sided cassette with vintage style clear case and alternate "Princeton Boys" cover. 50 copies.
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I picked Concrete Ph II because it's one of few from the Old Guard that I enjoy and would listen to without irony. The sounds of the burning charcoal are almost too monolithic to be of use – while I'm sure I could have processed them, it made more sense to do granular synthesis on something else that was similar.
Somehow in this process I started thinking about Creative Commons audio used in YouTube videos, mainly tracks by Kevin MacLeod that have become ubiquitous to the point that they've become their own tropes. Specifically, I looked for songs that are most frequently used for cute/quirky/fun/playful/bright content, like animal videos or craft tutorials. Good MacLeod examples are "Investigations," "Life of Riley," "Jaunty Gumption," and "Quirky Dog." These typically use plucked strings, pitched percussion, and "funny" wind instruments (detuned flute, oboe, bassoon) that felt like they could be easily pushed somewhere adjacent to Xenakis's charcoal.
I initially thought to use "Life of Riley"*, but granulating it blurred the ukulele to the point of being unrecognizable. "Sneaky Snitch,"** on the other hand, leaves a lot of silences, which lends itself well to a half-linear granulated experience of the original track. This description constitutes an attribution to Sneaky Snitch by Kevin MacLeod, but in keeping with the piece title, Creative Commoncrete Ph (Attribution III.0) is also released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. It's not nearly as functional as the original, so I'm not sure it would be applicable for cat videos anymore, but it's open to anyone to use and transform. I'm sure this is what Xenakis would have wanted.
* tasting notes: fast ukulele strumming plus xylophone melody, conjures images of someone's beach vacation photo reel with diagonal page-turn transitions or a narrated timelapse of decorating cupcakes
** tasting notes: synthesized pizzicato strings with oboe countermelodies; conjures visions of narrative cat content, in which one cat, dog, child, drunken adult, trundling bug, or other conceivably mischievous ambulatory creature has been characterized as a mostly-innocuous villain with a plan described (?) to the viewer over two minutes of subtitled inner dialogue and casual skulking
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