This one ended up being quite multi-layered. This year I have been trying to make pieces of music for specific friends of mine, which has been a lot of fun and somewhat productive. The ‘thankful’ prompt encouraged me to return to something I’ve had in mind for years, which is making something out of the sound bank from Zelda Majora’s Mask, which a friend sent to me years ago when we lived in the same house and played the game together. The files are a mixture of tiny recognisable samples and bursts of noise, which I believe are longer samples sped up to save space on the N64 cartridge. They sound amazing and chaotic played ‘straight’, in a way that reminded me of cut-up sample-scramble noise records, particularly something like John Weise’s incredible ‘Soft Punk’ album. This prompt (and accompanying deadline) got me to actually realise something with this idea and these sounds.
In the process of working on the material the thanks kept on spiralling! I also thought of high-speed grindcore / noisecore via Sissy Spacek (who I’ve been listening to a lot recently) and another friend. In the end I made a 15-track imaginary 7" EP: an A-side of tiny fast noisy tracks that all start with a grindcore-esque click-click-click-click, and a B-side of one drone-loop piece. All made using only these sound-files from the game cartridge (including all the noise), with no effects other than time / pitch adjustment and layering. It’s very silly in places but I also really like how it sounds.
I need to make some artwork before I upload the whole EP publicly, but here is a three-track excerpt for Disquiet, featuring one micro-track, one medium-sized track, and the longer B-side track, segued together.
Thanks to my friends Jae and Robin, my grindcore friend George, the wonderful game Majora’s Mask, and John Wiese / Sissy Spacek.
PS I’d also be thankful if someone could tell me if this bandcamp link shows as a link, as a playable widget, or not at all, (on computer or phone) as my mileage varies!
