In the Spring of 2004 I invited 25 experimental music artists to send raw audio material to me. I mixed together their material with my own into two big multi-layered abstract audio sound sculpture collages, and released them on a home-produced CDR.
Collage Mania #1 participants:
XV Parowek, Poland (field recordings, electronics, manipulations); Adam Bohman, England (voice, tapes); busyditch, USA (tapes, theremin, circuit bent Speak & Spell and Casio SK-1, Portable Anarchy circuit bent sound generator, synths, prepared turntable); Don Campau, USA (voice, synth, guitar, tapes); Mike Cosma, USA (voice, guitar, rhythms); davmo, USA (tape effects, percussion, electric guitar); dustindustrial, USA (circuit bent Speak & Math and E-Z Groove Bongoes, Alesis Air Synth, Korg Kaoss, synths); Fever Spoor, The Netherlands (field recordings, voice, metal, glass, singing bowl, thumb piano); Finalcut, Belgium (tapes, electronics, effects, manipulations); Dave Fuglewicz, USA (software synthesizers, samples); Charles Rice Goff III, USA (voice, MicroMoog synth); Pascal Hament, The Netherlands (Korg Kaoss, cracklebox, synth, tapes, piano); Brice Hornback, USA (self-built modular analog synth); Invader From Mars, Japan (trash noise sounds); G.X. Jupitter-Larsen, USA (tape from a Haters performance); Mac of BIOnighT, Italy (voice, tapes, saw, artificial and altered sounds); Al Margolis [If, Bwana], USA (guitar synthesizer); Chris Phinney [Mental Anguish], USA (electric guitar, ebow, Reason 2.0); Napalmed, Czech Republic (manipulations of industrial shop sounds); Keith Nicolay [Post Prandials], USA (guitar, flute); Brian Noring, USA (guitar, Moog Sonic Six synthesizer); Planetaldol, France (field recordings, manipulations); Mark Sonnenfeld, USA (poetics, field recordings); Straiph, Scotland (tapes); Philipp Wolokitin [Monopolka], Russia (circuit bent electronics and toy instruments); Zyrtax, The Netherlands (voice manipulations); and me, Hal McGee, USA (voice, piano, shortwave radio, Moog theremin, tapes, cracklebox, circuit bent Casio SK-1 and SK-5).
I promise you that you've never heard anything like Collage Mania before. It's big, noisy and seemingly chaotic. But repeated listenings will reveal new details. Every time you listen to it you will hear something new. Don't expect melodies, beats and rhythms. These are present in Collage Mania, but they are used as abstract elements in the collage. Collage Mania is entertaining, but it requires the listener to actively listen. Collage Mania is funny, aggravating, "difficult", hysterical, and off the wall. It's a highly-detailed, richly-textured work that will continue to amaze you every time you listen to it. Mixed and mastered by Hal McGee on July 4, 2004. Constructed on a Fostex X-12 4-track cassette recorder.
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