The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in Columbus in 1986. [1] They create music that falls within the borders of the sound collage genre, typically using uncleared and illegal samples from various sources as a form of protest against copyright law. The ECC also produces numerous audio experiments that goes outside regular composition methods, including the disfiguring of compact discs in a live performance known as "CDestruction". They have produced a few video works as well, ranging from re-edited 50's corporate shorts to Teddy Ruxpin reciting the works of William S. Burroughs. Other activities include culture jamming.
They are one of the pioneers of the mash-up or bootleg, where two or more songs are mixed together into a new track. According to Neil Strauss in The New York Times , "...many musical observers trace the official beginnings of the British bootleg scene to The Evolution Control Committee, which in 1993 mixed a Public Enemy a cappella with music by Herb Alpert." These are the now-classic "Public Enemy/Whipped Cream Mixes" containing Public Enemy's inflammatory raps titled "By the Time I Get To Arizona" and "Rebel Without a Pause" overdubbed onto instrumentals by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. [2]
The ECC wrote "Rocked by Rape," consisting of samples of Dan Rather's deadpan delivery describing various atrocities over looped riffs from AC/DC's "Back in Black." This work brought legal threats against The ECC by CBS, but by 2003, CBS appeared to have dropped the issue. [3] "Rocked by Rape" was nationally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered in 2000. [4] It was even played at a roast for Rather, later broadcast on C-SPAN.
Since 2000, Gunderson has performed his works on stage through an electronic instrument of his own invention: "The Thimbletron." It is made of a pair of gloves with ten thimbles attached at the ends of the fingers that are then wired to a laptop computer. As the thimbles are touched together, the laptop in turn plays a different sound sample. Gunderson claims that the device uses "thimbletronium energy" and warns that "thimbletronic radiation can leak unexpectedly due to a mishap during a live performance. The audience is advised to attend Thimbletron performances at their own risk." Gunderson has also modified a bread toaster in a similar fashion, with each depression of a lever playing a sample.
The Thimbletron has been largely retired in public performances in favor of the Wheel of Mashup in which audience members come up on stage and spin a wheel to randomly select the music and vocals to be combined. These are then mashed together in real time using the VidiMasher 3000, a large rear-projected touch screen used to control Ableton Live. VidiMasher 3000 (Video Mashup Screen) Demo
Mark Gunderson also records as DJ Pantshead and performs with Cheese & Pants Theater, a comedy/performance art duo consisting of a giant pair of pants and a giant Parmesan cheese shaker who pantomime to bizarrely edited vintage audio and as DJ John Philip Suicide with Dub Assault. Past projects have included the experimental performance troupe Gaga, several ECC performances at the Columbus Avant Garage film festival, and a release with the Weird Love Makers. A present project is his webcast 'The Sound of Plaid' as Trademark G. at the Amsterdam-based international radio-art webstation DFM RTV INT, which airs two times each week.
Other related artists include The Bran Flakes, Emergency Broadcast Network, Escape Mechanism, Negativland, John Oswald, People Like Us and The Tape-beatles.
Greg Gillis, in interview outtakes for the movie RIP: A Remix Manifesto, admits that Evolution Control Committee was a major influence and inspiration to create the mashups for his artistic persona Girl Talk. Gillis even explains that the best description of Girl Talk's music is "Plunderphonics."[ citation needed ]
Compact Disc Digital Audio, also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the Red Book, one of a series of Rainbow Books that contain the technical specifications for all CD formats.
Digital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a Compact Cassette, using 3.81 mm / 0.15" magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. The recording is digital rather than analog. DAT can record at sampling rates equal to, as well as higher and lower than a CD at 16 bits quantization. If a comparable digital source is copied without returning to the analogue domain, then the DAT will produce an exact clone, unlike other digital media such as Digital Compact Cassette or non-Hi-MD MiniDisc, both of which use a lossy data-reduction system.
John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. His best known project is Plunderphonics, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings.
A mashup is a creative work, usually a song, created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, typically by superimposing the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another and changing the tempo and key where necessary. Such works are considered "transformative" of original content and in the United States they may find protection from copyright claims under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law.
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. Making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging. Recordings may be copied and traded among fans without financial exchange, but some bootleggers have sold recordings for profit, sometimes by adding professional-quality sound engineering and packaging to the raw material. Bootlegs usually consist of unreleased studio recordings, live performances or interviews without the quality control of official releases.
Cassetteboy are an English electronic music and comedy duo. The pair have achieved success with their cut-ups of celebrities such as Alan Sugar and David Cameron to make parodies of their subjects. Several of the duo's videos have gone viral, with 50 millions views on their own YouTube alone. Despite their success, Cassetteboy made no money from their videos due to their questionable legal status, until a revision of UK copyright law in 2014.
The Legion of Doom is a music production team and electronic music group, known for their download-only mashup album Incorporated, remixes, and original music for horror soundtracks.
Some Assembly Required is a sound collage radio program in the United States, produced in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the first radio show known to focus exclusively on works of sample based music, and appropriation in audio art. The nationally syndicated program features work by artists from a variety of genres, including plunderphonics, hip hop turntablism, musique concrète, noise, bastard pop, sound art and more. The program celebrated its tenth anniversary on January 27, 2009. The final episode originally aired in 2011.
Eerie Materials was an independent record label started in the early 1990s, first based in Richmond, Virginia, and later in San Francisco, California.
Antediluvian Rocking Horse (ARH), formed 1994 St. Kilda, Australia, is an audio project maintained by two core artists credited as DJ2 and DJ3. DJ2 is Paul Wain, a sculptor and graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts. DJ3 is Susan King, a collage artist, writer and anti-copyright advocate. The composer Ollie Olsen was also a member. The project produces music and soundscapes that are entirely recycled from other recorded works.
Eclectic Method is the name of an audio-visual remix act, originally formed in London in 2001 by Jonny Wilson. Geoff Gamlen and Ian Edgar. Wilson is the sole remaining member.
Jordan Roseman, known professionally as DJ Earworm, is an American mashup artist from San Francisco, California, who has achieved recognition for his technically sophisticated, songwriting oriented music and video mashups. His annual “United State of Pop” mashup features the top 25 songs of the year, based in part on the Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 chart, in one mix.
A mixtape is a compilation of music, typically from multiple sources, recorded onto a medium. With origins in the 1980s, the term normally describes a homemade compilation of music onto a cassette tape, CD, or digital playlist. The songs are either ordered sequentially or made into a continuous programme by beatmatching the songs and creating seamless transitions at their beginnings and endings with fades or abrupt edits. Essayist Geoffrey O'Brien described this definition of the mixtape as "perhaps the most widely practiced American art form".
Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and eventually explicitly defined in the liner notes of his Grayfolded album. Plunderphonics is a form of sound collage. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity.
Jaydiohead is the mashup project of the music of Jay-Z and Radiohead that was mixed and produced by New York producer Minty Fresh Beats. Tannone premiered the album Jaydiohead on his Myspace page on December 30, 2008, which was officially released to download January 1, 2009. The first album was followed up by the July 12, 2009 release of Jaydiohead: The Encore, which featured five new mixes. The album Jaydiohead has been called an internet sensation.
A mash-up novel is an unauthorised non-canonical work of fiction which combines a pre-existing literature text, often a classic work of fiction, with another genre, usually horror genre, into a single narrative.
Jon Nelson is a sound collage artist and a radio show host for Some Assembly Required. He "mashes music and found sound — from old movies, laugh tracks, the news — to make what he calls the audio dreamscape of the media age." Jon Nelson has been championing the genre of mashup music for more than 10 years; Some Assembly Required is now syndicated throughout the United States and Canada. 262 episodes were produced from 1999 to 2011.
Plagiarhythm Nation, sometimes stylized as Plagiarhythm Nation, Vol 2.0, is the second full-length album by Mark Gunderson's experimental music project The Evolution Control Committee. It was released on Seeland Records on April 15, 2003.
Participants in an online music scene who rearrange spliced parts of musical pieces form mashup culture. The audio-files are normally in MP3 format and spliced with audio-editing software online. The new, edited song is called mashup. The expression mashup culture is also strongly connected to mashup in music. Even though it was not originally a political community, the production of mash-up music is related to the issue of copyright. Mashup Culture is even regarded as "a response to larger technological, institutional, and social contexts".
Todd Graham is a Canadian comedian and filmmaker best known for creating the acclaimed short film, Apocalypse Pooh.