Like the vegetation god Osiris, radio was a new deity, extending our time frame into a simultaneity of divergent signals, scrambling biorhythms, transplanting the seasons, and filling the headphones of telegraph operators with voices and fragments of music amid the expected dots and dashes.

The piece is called "The Gospel of the Horse", it arose out of the question of what is rhythm, and what constitutes rhythm. It is known that rhythm is a natural element, it is inherent in nature from the beat of the heart to the cycle of the seasons. When it is applied to music, it is taken for granted that the rhythm will be provided by a drum. By taking the galloping of horse hooves and not identifying the sound until a few seconds into the piece, the effect was to confuse the listeners associations and impressions. The listener is asked to reevaluate their perception of what they are listening to.

"The Gospel of the Horse" arose from the influence of "Add N to (X)", an English art band who play with the dynamic of the technological and the biological. My idea was an attempt to dichotomize the base of rhythm in the natural with the height of aesthetic music found in the human. I chose a choir singing a hymn to represent the high aesthetic of music, and blended the two in simultaneity to further the juxtaposition of two variant sound elements.

The format of the piece began on SoundMaker 1.3 and a four track. It was then downloaded onto Cool Edit, where it was edited and tweaked. The use of SoundMaker allowed me to loop the two elements and synchronize the beat and tones in the piece. By audio mixing on Cool Edit, I was able to utilize technology in the construction of the piece and create an original sound piece.

Mixers are the vultures and parasites of audio-visual society. Their recycling has nothing to do with economic considerations, but comes from an obsession with recordings that have escaped real-time mode. They lose themselves in the galaxy of everything that has ever been recorded. Hammond organs, animal noises, fairy tales, nonstop hits a-go-go, speeches by John F. Kennedy, Dutch cowboy music.

[ends]