Out of Style

instrumentation: electronic
duration: 3:51
written in: 2015

A bluntly formalist remix/rearrangement of a top-ten hit. 

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If you’re curious, here’s what I did: I cut up the song at the transients, which gave me 1,165 tiny samples. Then I arranged those samples from shortest to longest, creating a very gradual deceleration. Finally I applied a pitch shift, so that the piece begins a tritone below the original recording and gradually bends back up over the course of four minutes.

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What fascinated me about this project was the fact that such technical and seemingly arbitrary procedures produced such a clear dramatic effect: it’s impossible to tell what song I used at the beginning, and completely obvious by the end, but where the moment of recognition happens is unpredictable.

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(If you want a spoiler, click here.)

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I created Out of Style for Hedra Rowan's annual Meat Scenes project, in which artists respond to the year's hit singles.  The 2015 edition also includes mashups, remixes and cut-ups by Alex Christie, Justin Enoch, Weston Olencki, A. Campbell Payne and others.  You can get it on Bandcamp.