Some Assembly Required
For all of you collage and assemblage artists out there, if you don’t know about it, you should spend some time -maybe a long time - checking sound collage artists on this great podcast. Incredible for background studio music while you are working.
Buried deep in there someplace is some of my own audio collage works featured as well from back in the days when I was messing around with audio collage, field recordings and microsound.org. Digital audio was still pretty primitive back in those days compared to now but revolutionary at the time.
When I was doing that, probably 2000 - 2010ish I eventually had to put it behind me because I would get so absorbed in it that it was having a negative effect on the rest of my life outside of the headphones. Not that I ever made that much work. Maybe one album’s worth. It all remained in sketchbook form.
I was calling these Massurrealist Meditations. a lot of them are from 2001 - 2003, Below is Massurrealist Meditation #5 as a sample. Some are very meditative and some pretty wild with differents sorts of emotional feeling. I think these were all a response to the environment post 9/11, 2001 and the madness that followed.
We were living in Cuernavaca, Mexico at that time and had brought up an exhibition of work for my Fort Worth, Texas gallery - William Campbell Contemporary Art and were in Fort Worth at the time of the event. On the morning of 9/11 we were at a hotel and my dealer called me to turn on the TV. The first plane had already hit the first tower and then as we watched the second one hit.
Then the borders were closed and we couldn’t get back to Cuernavaca nor did we have the funds to wait it out so we stayed at a relative’s house for a couple of weeks until we could get back home.
Anyway, this post is to point you to the following…
"Some Assembly Required" is a pioneering U.S. sound collage radio show and podcast, hosted by Jon Nelson, that features mashups, audio art, and experimental music, using found sounds and samples to create new compositions, a style that's both musical and avant-garde, celebrating the art of collage in audio form. The term also relates to broader collage art, with exhibitions and music inspired by combining disparate elements, from visual art to the experimental music of artists like Brian Eno and DJ Shadow.
Key Aspects of Some Assembly Required Music
Genre: Sound collage, mashup, audio art, experimental music, sampling.
Style: Combines diverse audio sources—instructional records, pop music, field recordings—into new, often humorous or thought-provoking, musical pieces.
Artists: Features creators like DJ Shadow, Wax Audio, The Tape-beatles, and others who work with found sounds and creative sampling.
Focus: Explores themes of memory, nostalgia, and specific states of mind through sound, often with a strong cultural commentary.
Where to Find It
Podcast: You can find episodes and playlists on the official Some Assembly Required website and through platforms like Mn Artists/Walker Art Center.
Compilations: Look for digital releases featuring sound collage miniatures from the show, like the “50/50 Compilation”.
At one point Jon sent me the entire program to that point in CD form for the archives which are stored here.