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Science

Monday, 9 June 2008

Jan Turkenburg writes: “I don’t know if you are a member of the Soundscavengers, but here is something that you need to know: a scientific experiment to try and create the most horrible peice of music. You can find it here”.
And (t) here I found this text:
“An online poll conducted in the ’90s set Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on a quest to create the most annoying song ever. After gathering data about people’s least favorite music and lyrical subjects, they did the unthinkable: they combined them into a single monstrosity, specifically engineered to sound unpleasant to the maximum percentage of listeners. The song is not new, but it resurfaced on Dial “M” for Musicology.
Amazingly, this “most unwanted music” contains little dissonance — that would have been too easy. For the most part, they seem to have tried to assemble these elements in a listenable way.
Komar & Melamid and David Soldier’s list of undesirable elements included holiday music, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children’s chorus and the concept of children in general (really?), Wal-Mart, cowboys, political jingoism, George Stephanopoulos, Coca Cola, bossanova synths, banjo ferocity, harp glissandos, oompah-ing tubas and much, much more. It’s actually a fascinating listen, worthwhile for the opera rapping alone. (We didn’t think that was possible either.)”
And (t)here I also found this song:

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But Jan, what are the Soundscavengers?!

Comments:

jan

2008-06-10 04:07:38

It’s a secret society that digs for dusty vinyl treasures, that never made it to any hitparade.

Marco

2008-06-13 04:48:54

The Sound Scavengers mailinglist started out as an alternative to the Exotica mailinglist, at a time when the latter was in a bit of turmoil.
M. Ace is the owner of the Sound Scavengers, but it’s moderated by me and Cheryl S. from Canada.