Discominimalism

By: HILOBROW
September 30, 2012

Editor’s note: This is one of the most popular posts, traffic-wise, ever published on HiLobrow. Click here to see a list of the Top 25 Most Popular posts (as of October 2012); and click here for an archive of all of HILOBROW’s most popular posts.

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Our friend and HiLobrow contributor Franklin Bruno recently came up with the following high-lowbrow “DIY discominimal mashup” experience. Here are Bruno’s instructions.

STEP 1: Start the two songs below. They’ll go in and out of phase w/ each other, so it doesn’t matter which you start first or if there’s a gap of a few seconds.

STEP 2: Adjust relative volumes to taste.

STEP 3: Trip the fuck out for about 8 mins or as long as you can stand it.

“IN C”

Above: the semi-aleatory “In C” (1964), by Terry Riley — often cited as the first minimalist composition. It consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times.

“LOVE IN C MINOR”

Above: “Love in C Minor,” the influential 1975–76 debut song by French disco drummer and singer-songwriter Marc Cerrone — in collaboration with Alec R. Costandinos.

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UPDATE: Thanks to Boing Boing traffic, this is now the most popular HiLobrow post of the past 12 months… and one of the 25 most popular posts we’ve ever published! CLICK HERE to check out lists of our other most popular posts…