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Vox bop
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Alexander MacSween drums up some mouth music
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
The latest project of local drum hero Alexander MacSween (Pest 5000,
Detention etc.) is called Vocollation, which is a double entendre. It
literally refers to collating vocal sounds together, but don’t
forget, “collation” is the French word for snack—“The
pieces,” says MacSween, “are like little snacks before the
main course,” meaning this Friday’s show by NYC avant-guardian
Elliot Sharp.
In a way, Vocollation is a reversal of hip hop beatboxing, where mouth
noise is used to evoke drums. Here, drums are used to trigger mouth
noises. MacSween coughs up the tech specs for us: “It’s a
kind of electronic drum kit that triggers two different samplers, which
go through a variety of different effects—vocal harmonizers, delays,
pitch shifters, things of that nature. All the samples that I’m
using are voice samples of one sort or another. Some come from documentary
film sources, others from a variety of records, others still I made
myself. There’s treated animal sounds in there. Anything that comes
out of something’s mouth is allowed to be part of the sound bank
I’m using.”
MacSween’s made a point of not getting too abstract with the thing,
making for an engaging and often funny exercise. “There’s
one piece which is made entirely of the words ‘yeah’ and ‘baby,’
from popular music from as far back as Bessie Smith, right up to artists
I won’t name for fear of being sued. There’s another section
that’s taken from a recording of the writer of Jerzy Kozinski reading
from his book The Painted Bird. Those samples are combined with sounds
of actual birds, and things that sound like birds but aren’t—I
have some cows which I sped up and they sound amazingly like birds.
“It’s all a bit like William Burroughs’ cut-and-paste
process, only with sound samples rather than printed text. The original
sources are hinted at in the final product, so it’s not completely
abstract. There are the new ideas that are created, but also some reference
back to what it originally was—only you can’t put your finger
on it.” :
With Elliott
Sharp & Janene Higgins at Théâtre LaChapelle on Friday,
march 1, 8pm, $15
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