June 3rd, 2021
Extremity Cassette on Radio Tsonami
Extremity Cassette is a generative audio piece that imagines samples on a near-endless stretch of audio tape. Wound through a complex, multi-head cassette machine, the samples overlap with themselves, repeat, vanish and reappear. The magnetic nature of the machine itself picks up noises from the ether and mixes them with free reed and heterodyne sounds.
Inspired by the short story The White Death by Stanislaw Lem, where a planet made entirely of inorganic material is the crystalline host to fabulous machines, Extremity Cassette imagines a prehistoric mechanism that loops and churns out a never ending, ever changing musical score. Until one day the organic world is introduced … then rust interferes with the workings of the cassette … the sounds become progressively more erratic, and eventually stop.
Originally composed for Art’s Birthday, 17 January 2009, Extremity Cassette will play overnight from June 1-7, 2021 on Radio Tsonami, originating from Valparaíso, Chile.
Absolute Value of Noise (Peter Courtemanche): VLF Antenna and Receiver
Anna Friz: Theremin, Harmonica, Kazoo, Melodica
