Soundscape: "What's Cookin Now" response

Tony Clavelli and Jason Freeman's "What's Cookin Now"

Our goal with “What’s Cookin’ Now” was to take a traditional, older audio file, and remix it in a variety of (potentially) contradicting ways to incorporate fragments of multiple sound artists we read about this semester. Beginning with John Cage, some of the original layers of the tracks contain our version of the “Water Walk.” Both Jason and I would wander around the kitchen and perform tasks at specific moments in the song that felt good. This is slightly different from Cage, because our work was improvised instead of written as a score. To further complicate this scenario, our motions were occasionally very deliberate. For example, I actually made a cup of coffee during the recording—grinding beans, heating up water for the press—because within the artificial context, the act of recording became part of the listening process as well. Instead of simply acting, there was now a rhythm and a set of parameters in which to act—I could only grind the beans on beat with the song, but I still had the goal of making coffee in mind.

Thematically, this deliberate action in an otherwise random setting is how “What’s Cooking Now” functions throughout. The track itself that provides a backdrop for the song, Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’,” was set to modulates in pitch and balance with a fixed period, however no other noises are so in sync. More importantly, the modulation period is in no way related to the tempo of the original track. This can be seen as a variation of the sort of cutting and organizing that Burroughs did in his “routines,” yet here there there was no distinct cut, but a blurring of the organization of sound, which similarly disorganizes the feel of the track.
In his chapter in Sound Unbound, Manuel DeLanda writes that a sound can be classified by its pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration, and he compares this to the DNA of the sound. By warping all of those simultaneously, we changed the DNA of the track so that is no longer what it was originally, but is instead something entirely different—which is what the whole remix culture thrives on.

We added, in a rather distant mix, a bit of a hip hop beat. Again, this layer mixes a combination of the new and digital world with something that is less precise and organic. Since the track’s tempo was fixed before we imported it to Garage Band, we weren’t able to automatically match a beat behind it. Instead, that beat was recorded manually, clicking the beat live on the keyboard as if it was an analog instrument. This further added to the anachronistic feeling of hearing Hank Williams in a digital world, while still hearing the kitchen sounds that fit well with the themes of his song.

Listening to the track, it’s not exactly as interesting as I had originally hoped. The whole thing clunks and is generally more disorienting than it is fun to listen to. But both Cage and Burroughs would not have said this was a fault, but instead a virtue. We were able to turn an old favorite into something uglier and stranger, and still enjoy ourselves clunking around the kitchen and banging on things. Perhaps it was not subversive, but it was a fun way to reimagine a text.

(Note: The track itself can be found on the CLC website, uploaded to the folder as directed in the chat room.)