not sure if that'll interest everyone, but i figured i should inform you
of this interesting archeological discovery...
i was strolling in a dollar store yesterday when i stumbled upon an
alleyfull of halloween paraphrenilia. out of those, the most
interesting item was a cassette tape, with no case or cover, dubbed
'spooky sound', & sold at, you guessed it, 1 dollar. it was evidently
marketed as a halloween background sound thing, probably for your living
room while the kids come trick-or-treating, although it seemed to be
suitable for haunted houses & similar attractions as well.
really curious about this, i started listening to the tape, & instead of
the spooky noise sampler i would have expected ('boo-hoo-hoo... ha
hahaha... meooow... crrrrrrk... booo-hahaha... etc.'), i was shocked
to find that the 30-minute tape was in fact a seamless medley of
ambient, semi-industrial compositions only seldom using actual 'spooky
samples' (though you do hear a cat near the beginning to a hysterical
effect). the result is creepy though more in a funny way, & gets in a
near-surreal phase when a cover of 'thriller' kicks in on side 2
(probably illegally!) this would be funny but not so amazing, but after
barely a few bars, the tape abrubtly goes back to the original
ambient/industrial tone, either a clever tape manipulation or an
unintended result of (very) bad editing, but it reminded me for a second
of sonic youth's tape collage of early live material, 'sonic death'.
(from what i've heard of how faust's 'tapes' is supposed to sound,
there's probably a bit of that in there, too.)
judging from the 'thriller' cover & the general sounding, i can only
suppose that this is a relatively old recording -- mid-80s at the least,
but probably before 1990. the sound quality is very shitty, though the
resulting lo-finess adds character to what would otherwise be a more
conventional piece. there is absolutely no information as to who made
the tape -- the only available information is the length (30 minutes), &
that it was made in china (though it doesn't say much about the actual
author, who is more likely occidental.)
i'm not sure of the value, compositional or otherwise, of this recording
-- musically it's surprising, but it's hard to define in conventional
terms, & i haven't listened to it enough to throughly analyze it. as
for who made this music, well, it could be anyone, & it's likely it's
someone we don't know. also, the sound quality on the tape is so bad
it's possible i make a cd-r version of it so that the recording doesn't
get lost, attempting to add some dynamic to the sound & getting rid of
some tape hiss while i'm at it.
though, one thing i can say is, this is to par with the tape i found a
year ago in harrisburg, pa of a preacher with a really academic voice &
a really orthodox set of ideas. it's just as creepy & humorous, though
for wholly different reasons.
--
david