040 A Scattered Bootleg  

  Click here for track on Soundcloud  

On Nov 30, 2018 I went to the Andy Stott show at Knockdown Center in New York. At the end of Andy Stott's set I realized that my iPhone in my pocket had been recording video for 39 minutes. Here is the audio of that 39 minutes scattered via a granular extender engine I created in Max/MSP.

Details: My GRAN_EXT engine, like any other granulator-type tool, plays back short grains of audio from an input file. One can control both the size of grains (let's say 500 ms plus or minus a random fluctuation) and also the position of the grains relative to the playhead (if locked to the playhead then you get a sound more similar to the original, but also you could randomize grain positions within any arbitrary-sized window relative to the playhead.)

To create this piece I used 8 different grains, each looping within the random position window of 39 minutes... i.e. the entire track. So at the beginning of the piece what you hear are 500 ms long grains that are taken randomly from any spot within the entire accidental bootleg recording. By the end of "A Scattered Bootleg" the grains are running out of room in the original recording and we get a much more empty sound.

Complementing that is a more ambient wash... These grains are taken from a window of +- 1000ms of the advancing playhead, so they maintain more fidelity to the actual arc of the performance.

This piece is the first in a series of productions called "Unreleased", meant to put out exclusively on Soundcloud some sketches and other sound material not necessarily meant for an EP or full-length album.

Previous releases can be found at russianarksakura.bandcamp.com