Tuesday, February 19, 2008

blackhumour - breathing like marcel (tape, Corrosive Tapes, 1988)


"The blackhumour audio project had its beginnings in early 1982 with the first few experiments I was doing on my teac 4-track reel-to-reel recorder. The resulting early pieces were not so good, but some of the pieces which were done with my then audio-partner, somebody else, were successful. Two of these pieces, 'murder', and 'trade and commerce', are included in the retrospective of early bh work, 'radical positive' (banned productions). This release also shows the evolution of the blackhumour approach away from treatment/effects techniques of any kind, such as equalization, reverberation. Flanging, echo, etc., and the choice made by blackhumour to use as its sole sound-construction source the use of 'found-object' human voice only, with the exclusion of such tape techniques as speed-masking (speeding up or slowing down the sound of the voice) or back-masking (the notorious technique of playing the voices backwards). Since 'snakes in an atheist's grave' (1984), NO blackhumour piece has used anything other than found object (spoken) human voice and editing techniques. (since 1986, digital editing has been included, thanks to inexpensive digital sampling.) I wanted the sound source to be absolutely basic. The human voice speaking was about as basic as i could get. The rationale being that we are constantly hearing speech, whether it is from others, or simply the sound of our own voices in our ears." (from Discogs) Oddly enough 'Breathing Like Marcel' is not included in that discography.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thankyou for this, your blog is a real treasure trove.

Anonymous said...

great!!! made me check the discogs discography..
missing also is the 'two women' tape, recorded back in 88 and issued in 92 on the long vanished s.p.h. tapes!

Anonymous said...

Agreed. You have done a great deal to disseminate and educate regarding the highly eclectic and exclusive world of experimental noise. You have also provided me with the only source for Blackhumour recordings I can find anywhere. Thank you so much!

blackhumour said...

as the artist, i too am gratified to see these works made easily available. those interested in engaging with blackhumour are warmly invited to contact me at blackhmr@speakeasy.net