L.O.S.D.: Organic 23 (LAB)
I don't recalled where I bought this.
I used to have a turntable in my classroom. I enjoyed it. For that matter, I used to have a CD player and computers that had disc drives built in, also useful. I've sometimes lectured on a brief history of audio recording and playback media, and having a turntable on hand to demonstrate vinyl record playback was useful. That, and not everything has been posted to Youtube. (Some of this time was also before Spotify.) Wendy Carlos' Switched On Bach* has generally been difficult to find online (a situation that may have changed) but I had my $1 copy there, if I wanted to talk about analog modular synth patching.
Once during these lectures, a student asked if the needle went from the outer edge to the inner, or vice versa. He had never dropped a stylus onto a vinyl record album. This was not a dumb kid either, he was a double music composition and computer programming major. I felt old in that moment. That was over ten years ago.
I'd talk about the various creative ways people have used vinyl records as a creative medium. That is, things like multi-colored vinyl, picture discs, concentric grooves, lock grooves.** I appear on the RRR-100 7" all lock-groove record, fifty artists on each side. I'm the second groove so it's easy to find my contribution. It's an almost unidentifiable as a saxophone, a brief moment of shifting multiphonics. That was fun to play for confused students.
I don't hate CDs the way I suppose some people do. I've also never lost my love of vinyl records, and and there are so many more things that can be done with the medium creatively.
I've been reorganizing my CD collection the past several days. With as many discs as I have, that means I've come across things I didn't remember I had. I don't recall where I got this package, but it was most likely in a bargain bin at The Exchange. (A chain of new and used CDs/DVDs/vinyl/etc, based out of Ohio.) L.O.S.D = Laboratory of Sonic Discovery. That sounds pretty pretentious, and a lot to live up to.
Thankfully I looked it over to discover that it's both a CD and a 5" record, the latter having a total of 23 lock grooves on it. Sold! To the best of my memory, this is the only 5" record I own, but not the first I know about. Squeeze released a "squeezed" 5" single in 1980, two years before 5" compact discs became commercially available.
The idea behind this L.O.S.D. release is that you are meant to layer and perform the lock groove record while simultaneously running in the three long pieces on the CD. The lock grooves are focused on higher frequencies, the CD lower. I can confirm this, there was some combination of low frequencies on the first track that made my speakers rattle.
I like the idea. Lock groove records are inherently performative; you're forced as the listener to pick up the needle and place it on another location. Most people don't have the capability of playing both at the same time though, and I listened to each separately on my stereo system. I suppose I could make the simultaneous playback happen, if I put in the effort. Another time perhaps.
The CD tracks are ambient sounding works that generally leave out the higher frequency range. I'm happy to keep them on as ambient listening. They aren't completely static and there are cycles of events that shift and change, but there's nothing in the sound aggregate that draws attention to itself. The pieces would fit in with the ambient drone streaming radio stations I've found on Radio Garden***, maybe even better than some of what I've heard there.
I've toyed with getting back on the air at WRCT, since I am faculty at the university and have the right to do so. It could be fun trying to combine the analog and digital elements together live on the air.
* Generally I've written off Switched On Bach as kitsch. I know that the truth is more nuanced. The Moog modular patch design on the project is at times amazing; "Air on a G String" has a surprisingly convincing oboe-sounding patch, for example. All the sounds are on a monophonic instrument, so chords are built through multitracking, all pre-MIDI and digital editing. That is pretty amazing. (I still think it's kitsch though.)
** I used to show off Christian Marclay's Record Without a Cover to my classes. Notes etched on one side of the record, grooves on the other. I kept it in an unlocked cabinet. That is, until I noticed on discogs.com that a copy had sold for over $300. Back home you go.
*** https://radio.garden/listen/soma-fm-drone-zone/kpP1NuqX
https://radio.garden/listen/mrg-fm/Rh5AvFLg
https://radio.garden/listen/a-m-ambient/4_aQkxd6
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