To Brian Szente: 10 Proposals For Recording Projects

SANCTA FE DO NAZCA COMPLACADAO

Concept: We dress up as friars and write lyrical quasi-Iberian music with quasi-Iberian words. We perform the songs with two nylon-string guitars and keenly honed dual vocal harmonies.
Result: Acclaimed performances in local coffeehouses in the span of three months, followed by a sudden disappearance. In the wake, we post several distraught fliers claiming to be from fans seeking our whereabouts.


MOCK UP

Concept: We diagram out eight prototypical pop songs, with durations, crescendi, strata, etc. Rather than create acceptable sounds to drape on these skeletons, we construct the skeletons themselves with pure sine tones.
Result: A CD EP on a respected Belgian experimental label.


TAY-SACHS

Concept: You on vocal and bass, myself on guitar and drums. We spend months crafting one passable early 80's-styled hardcore song.
Result: A DAT; we relentlessly push it until it is placed on an appropriate vinyl compilation of like-minded music. We submit a photo of a fairly obscure band in the same genre as our own, which will ensure that our ruse is exposed, say in a matter of months.


CARMEX KIDS

Concept: Each one of us laboriously transcribes the first minute of each phone conservation we conduct over the course of May 2007. We meet in August 2008 to recite and record the results, with my voice in the left channel and yours in the right channel. We try to keep to the original minute-long timeframe. Your conversations alternate with mine.
Result: CD-R; hand-distribute to local record stores.


YURU CHARA

Concept: We are recorded with contact mics, writhing and grunting under two huge heaps of fluorescent yarn (purple for you, yellow-green for me) approximately three meters apart in the same loft space.
Result: A limited-edition 10" record, self-released and issued to each couple featured in the New York Times' Weddings section of August 5, 2008.


FOXHUNTER GUITARS

Concept: Lovingly craft an approximation of Joni Mitchell's 70's fusion records (The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Mingus), with myself on fretless electric bass, you on Fender Rhodes, and five others, including a naive Joni ringer. We engineer a major label signing, but engineer our own disappearance on the eve of our first proper recording session. Splitting the advance money, I decamp for Vanuatu, you to the Canaries.
Result: A rough set of demos, for reissue twelve years later with much critical chin-stroking.


PLACEHOLDERS

Concept: We meet one night over a demijohn of Gordon's Gin, determined to write a single, wholly unimpeachable song. We exchange melodic ideas via humming. At each breakthrough, we record our results directly to cassette. By the next morning, we have recorded a single, wholly unimpeachable piece of blissful humming facetiously named "Hummin' Cummin' At'cha".
Result: A single full ninety-minute tape, circulated among our friends and associates.


JAMAISCA

Concept: We spend most of 2009 laboriously conceiving and recording a vision of what Jamaican music shall be in 25 years. We will present the results to the members of TOK, and convince them to lend their voices.
Result: We will sign to Astralwerks and put out three albums of descending quality, accompanied by a total of five (5) maxi-singles (including twelve [12] non-album B-sides), and ten [10] remixes for other artists.


LEN BIAS

Concept: Essentially a documentary project detailing the brief and tragic life of budding basketball star Len Bias. We combine audio reportage with Shepard Fairey-styled visuals glorifying man and myth alike.
Result: A gallery show in a mid-sized American city, with a limited-edition 7" record available at the gallery or through the artists' website.


WE JUST WANT YOUR HOLES TO USE

Concept: A snickering, condescending take on black metal tropes. We humiliate several giants of the movement by paying them exorbitant sums to parody themselves on record.
Result: One album on Matador, one album on Touch and Go, and many averrals of our complete sincerity and love of the music.