On the eve of my 30th birthday, for no particular reason whatsoever (perhaps to combat the onset of the various mid-life crises ; insomnia, ennui, etc.) I began rendering automatic enhancements of the most salient aspects of the pop music of my youth; a line, bar, or fragment of a particular song (after being heard out in "the wild" in the present & re-triggering its memory; akin to running into an old friend on the street & having to stage that awkward, stilted conversation neither of you wants to have) was chosen based on how much my nostalgic recollection of it differed from its contemporary reality. These largely remained on a series of hard drives until I started posting them on the sorely missed EchoNest offshoot thisismyjam.com somewhere around late 2011, where other people heard them for the first time, were confused, and eventually gave in to the ideas at play.
Each edit in the "Greatest Hits" (2003-) series was looped at exactly half-speed, then run through a battery of time- & gain-based processes in series that slowly and meticulously chewed through the audio, revealing hidden layers of content, context, and temporal / spectral production details; like shining a flashlight into the dark corners of each selection, exposing the hidden ghosts lurking within. Each representation here consists of a selected 3-20 minute chunk based on the perceived "significance" unraveled via this process, lasting a natural-seeming length (i.e. the ones that are less rewarding tend to be shorter & the better ones longer!)
I'll be (slowly) uploading all 200 "Hits" (which should yield approx. 24 hours of music) over the next few months/years. I know this is a cliché, but please play these extremely loudly, over good speakers (subs are a must given the low-end emphasis; don't bother listening over your phone, laptop, computer speakers! You'll miss more than half of what's going on here). I've also created an accompanying image for each "Hit," derived from the artwork of a given artists' "Greatest Hits" album; mass, minor, or tertiary market editions (personally I love seeing & using the various "Горбушка" -lineage variations) or, failing that, the cover of the single or album via which the track in question arrived. These were made utilizing tactically similar means: cheap, often preset plugin "filters" rendered in multiple passes.
While never issued in a broader commercial context, I occasionally run off physical copies of these on “Private” CD-R (thus far the first & second dozen housed together, then the third & fourth as well) to court possible installation opportunities; check the “Editions” page if you want to audition on your hausBlaupunkt.
The entire suite is dedicated to Tim Haslett, without whose guidance (through the then seemingly-endless sea of post-'00 Houston chopped & screwed mixes) I would have undoubtedly missed out on the chance to dwell on the pivotal ideas at play herein; R.I.P. Tim.
