Sound Collages
Back in 2014 (or was it 2013?), I started making sound collages. This was after listening to a radio show on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio stream called Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, which was a 2-hour weekly live improvised sound collage show. What is a sound collage? Well, a picture collage is created from taking images and text and cutting them up and arranging them in some design on a canvas. Imagine doing that with audio: making music loops, layering them with other loops, with found audio, with spoken word, with field recordings, with whatever, creating a dreamy mix of multilayered audio. Kenzo did his shows live on the air, I make mine offline on my laptop.
For a more detailed summary of my sound collages (a series an old friend of mine called Super Awesome Fun Time With Rand), along with a thorough archive from the past decade of my 100+ hour-long sound collages, please check here. For the remainder of this blog post, I'm going to talk about a couple of my sound collages I've been listening to lately.
First up is Super Awesome Fun Time With Rand 108: You Are Sleeping (The Dreams You Have). This was a collage I created back in April of 2020, the month the world shut down, the month the world changed forever. This one starts off a bit loud and rambunctious, but eventually resolves into something I think is rather profound and wonderful. This collage combines Alan Watts, Joe Frank, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Discussing Who Podcast, Cultdom Collective Podcast (of which I was a cohost), and so much more. I was listening to this podcast this evening while remembering friends I no longer have access to, and haven't seen or heard from in over a decade. I am sorry I've fallen out of the world. I'm sorry I've disappeared. I'm sorry I've been a disappointment. I'm sorry for everything. I miss all of you. I miss you all. I still love you all. I love the memories of you.
The second collage is one I was listening to this morning. I was on my way to work and parked my car at a local rest stop in order to eat breakfast. I then got a text from my boss saying power was out at work so I didn't have to come in until 9:30 (it was around 8:15 at that point, and work usually opens at 9:00am). I decided to, after eating breakfast, listen to one of my sound collages and chose this one. I eventually didn't have to show up to work until 10am, which was a nice change of pace. Anyway, I'm talking about Super Awesome Fun Time With Rand 127: A Ticket to Anywhere, a collage I created back in May of 2022. This is a collage I actually burned to a disc so I could listen to in my car, and I remember this is the collage I was blasting from my radio that one day when I drove 90 minutes east to the nearby city to meet up with a dearly beloved friend I'd not seen in almost a decade. This collage combines Garth Stevenson, Alan Watts, Alan Parsons Project, Aes Dana, Marble Hornets, Gary Jules, and so much more.
So anyway, those are just two of the over 100 sound collages I've made over the past decade. I think those two in particular turned out great. There are many others I'm rather fond of for one reason or another. I had fun making them, and maybe someone out there will listen to and enjoy them. They are all posted on both TalkShoe (with ads) and on Internet Archive (without ads).
Look for me out there, some day I'll touch the blue, blue sky.