Museum of Frenzy was recorded at various museums of the Smithsonian Institution using three cheap low quality portable tape recorders-one cheap "boombox" and 2 dictaphones. Zan and Jeff each recorded the environment. when they each had thirty minutes they switched tapes, and played back what was recorded and that was re-recorded onto one of the tapedecks. they walked around and played the tapes, waved them around, played with the volume, cover the speakers with their hands, changed the playback speed etc while recording other environmental sounds. several times they were stopped by security guards but they kept on recording. art galleries are normally quiet places so the unexpected blasts of lofi noise were confusing to any people in the galleries. zan mixed the three tapes by playing them back and recording them again on the poor quality boombox, so none of the recordings were ever "directly inputted" into the tapes decks--all are condensor mic recordings. the jeff remixes used the source tapes and feature minimal digital processing.
"ZANOISECT's "Muzeum of Frenzy" is the effect of operations on the field
recordings made "at various museums of the Smithsonian Institution on
cheap portable tape recorders by zan hoffman & jeff surak". In regards
to the sound source, the recording is not revealing, but quite interesting
nevertheless. The guys concocted a decent collage, consisting of three
parts. The first, mixed by Zan, is genuinely a noise one, but the other
two, mixed by Jeff, are definitely more varied. The sound seems "broad"
and "deep", there is less of noise and more of "noisescape" to it. To
the last part, the term "noise" is hardly applicable, and the input material
of the field recordings seems least treated and mixed. As a whole it is
quite intriguing, the first track being slightly inferior to the other."
Reviewer: Fritz1 -
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May 17, 2006 Subject: "I'm sorry is that too loud?" (May 16th 2006) "Hobo Hut Variations (Zan mix)" gets to be too much. Into about 13 minutes, you could hear this guy saying, "I'm sorry is that too loud?" (apparently asking someone who happened to be nearby). I would have an answer: "Well, not that it's too loud, but... it's too much noise. It's almost like pink noise!" You get this constant noise that goes on through almost the whole half-hour track. At least I could listen to the Zan mix for free (thank goodness for the Internet Archive).
However, I prefer the Ladno tracks. "Ladno 1" may be very much like the Zan mix but not as annoying and lasts about 15 minutes. "Ladno 2" is much quieter and also lasts about 15 minutes. So, with just the Ladno tracks, I could tolerate the frenzy much better.
