Steve Steve: An MP3 Blog

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Introducing: What I Did During College

This will make you crazy (and not in that good sense). Like the Milgram experiment, which showed that ordinary citizens of New Haven could administer deadly electric shocks to total strangers, my experiment in slicing and splicing hundreds of soundbites of popular music together into themed songs shows that ordinary humans cannot endure the flood of memories that are triggered by the abrupt succession of highly familiar sound clips. These "songs" (if they even deserve the term) will seem novel and thrilling—but this feeling quickly turns into one of wanting to stop the music.

In the summer of 2003, I made this "album" (the word isn't quite right) out of all my music on my Itunes. Armed with Quicktime and the ability to cut and past bits of music together, as well as a lot of free time on nights and weekends, I organized hundres of bits of music into some coherent order, lyrics-wise and beat-wise. The "songs" represent more a feat of organization than my skill at being a DJ.

I offer here a taste of the 19-song "album" which runs over an hour. Here is the first song, the "Introduction." If you can't handle the introduction, don't even think about listening to this one: - "Sex". And here is a large medley, which I call "Medley 1" (there are two other large medleys). Again, this (unfortunately) turned out to be a successful experiment in what drives people crazy (or, alternatively, what can amuse stoners). I have to apologize in advance, because I doubt anyone will like this. But it's original (sort of) and it's making its public appearance here for the first time.

3 Comments:

Blogger Eli said...

Ilya, you are a mad genius, a self-taught DJ, an outsider artist in the field of mixology. You were definitely ahead of your time with these mixes, and with better equipment, you would have been a predecessor of Girl Talk. The "sex" mix forced me to reflect on the absurdity of modern mating practice to the point where I never want to have sex again, at least not while listening to that "song."

11:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

fyi, the phrase "losing my religion" does not equate to having sex, as far as i know...but it's funny still ;)

-m

3:15 PM  
Blogger Ilya said...

Well, the phrase should mean that!

7:41 PM  

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