We all know that vinyl records are vulnerable, and need to be treated with respect. Keeping to this rule I’ve always been mindful of the way that I handle all records that I come across. Now it’s time to see what happens when I don’t follow the rules. Below you will find recordings that serve as a document of degradation. Every week (or so) since October I have been using this page to post an audio recording of a 12" record that has been intentionally abused.
As with all blogs the posts work backwards with the most recent post at the top and the original track at the bottom. Click to hear the original track.
Alternatively, you can click here to be presented with just the audio posts.
A link to a reissue version of Christian Marclay’s Record Without a Cover - The piece of work that very much inspired this whole project.
The record has been laying in a well used drawer for some time now and this is what happened the first time I tried to play it. I don’t need to give much of an explanation, just let your ears do the talking. The needle is clearly having a hard time sticking to any one groove and just ends up flailing all over the record. It’s brilliant. I couldn’t have set this up if I tried.
This is what happened the second time I put the needle on the record. Clearly it’s having a much better time at sticking in the groove but the degradation of the record is really showing. The sound is very harsh and there’s a great deal of surface noise.
I cite Turntablism as a large influential factor on my work with Vinyl Drag. It’s the fundamental idea of using a medium, such as vinyl, in a new way that I’m interested in the most. And over on the more musical side of things there’s this Canadian Turntablist Kid Koala who is extremely inventive with his records and uses them to create interesting narratives. This video does its best to explain what he does.
For the past week the record has been in the lounge, leaning against the radiator - which apparently doesn’t warp and bend it like I thought it would. Anyhow, the degradation seems to be picking up again, the last few weeks were a bit of a let down. The overall volume level has dropped, and there is a lot of surface noise. Our lounge gets quite a lot of use with 6 people walking in and out of it all the time so no doubt there’s a ton of dust and dirt embedded in the grooves. There doesn’t seem to be too much skipping, but the odd jump here and there is present as is expected.
Another few days, another upload. This one is pretty much exactly the same as last weeks recording. My back room is freezing, so I thought that would have some affect on the sound but clearly it doesn’t. The poor disc has been in the temperature for days now. You just have to feel sorry for it. The only differences I can tell are that this weeks recording is slightly clearer than before. It doesn’t really make sense that this project seems to be going backwards!
Christian Marclay
Marclay discusses his interest in unwanted sound, his use of turntables, early examples of his art and more recent pieces too.
One artists that I refer to a great deal in relation to influence is the work of Janek Schaefer, a sound artists based in London. His work often incorporates the use of innovative use of vinyl records and often uses manipulated ‘found’ records in his performances. The idea that I draw inspiration from is the same idea that is adopted in turntablism, by this I mean that it’s the creative re-using of something in a way that is out of context.
Interesting: Here’s another update on the project. Only two things things I can really comment on and that’s the clicking at the beginning of the track. I have no idea where it comes from but it soon disappears and the other thing to mention is that this weeks recording is interestingly, unlike previous weeks, the whole track. The needle didn’t lose its tracking and skip over the grooves like it has done for a few weeks. Which is strange, as after time I expected this to get worse. But of course this just shows that this project is determined by chance theory and therefore can’t totally be controlled by the artist. Because the connection between the audio (the record) and the receiver (the needle) can be broken with something as simple as a heavy footstep the whole process of listening to a record can and inevitably will be altered every time the user listens back to a recording.
Here’s a picture of the waveforms again, the top waveform is of November 8th and the bottom is today’s recording. The volume levels have dropped considerably in the second and as you can see at the beginning represented by the thin lines that are rising out of the waveform there’s plenty of surface noise.
I’d like to mention a few influential artists and ideas that have inspired my work for this project as I feel influences are an important key to understand the piece perhaps.
First up is Christian Marclay who is a huge influence to this project, and I would go as far as saying he’s the biggest influence to the piece. His piece Record Without a Cover is the main work that Vinyl Drag gives a nod to. Marclay’s Record Without a Cover is a vinyl record with the instructions; “Do not store in a protective package” embossed directly onto the disc itself. With this simple idea the piece that Marclay originally had pressed onto the disc changes in a way to reflect the degradation that would happen to a record left out of it’s cover after the dust and all manner of household accidents happen to it.
I then started to think about how easy it is to create a new piece of art through the mistreatment of another medium and this, coupled with the knowledge of Marclay’s Record Without a Cover sparked the whole idea.
There were other influential factors that had their play in the conception of this idea of degredation and objects and mediums working in ways they’re not meant to. Turntablism is a fine example of this and has been an interest of mine for a long time. Turntablism is a way of creating something new by using something else. DJs and scratch artist’s using found materials, recordings and music to create new soundscapes and “worlds” is something I’m very keen on, in particular the stories that Canadian turntablist Kid Koala creates from the records he finds in thrift stores. Pulled from his website:
kid koala lives in Montreal. his weapons of choice are… pencils, paper, clay, glue, mosquitoes, records and mixers… all of which he slyly uses to bring joy and silliness to the far reaches of the earth. [emphasis mine]
The idea of using an analog medium such as vinyl in a way that was not originally intended is what fascinates me the most and is a large contributing factor to the progression of Vinyl Drag.
I’ve decided to make a few minor changes to the project. Nothing too drastic.
I originally intended to do a large amount of evil and twisted things to the piece of vinyl to make it degrade quicker, such as drilling holes in it, but I’ve decided to stick to methods that could actually happen to a record in your home. Since no one would ever go near vinyl with a drill I think having a more realistic approach will help the project considerably.
So for example I will be leaving the vinyl out of it’s protective sleeve at all times, having dust fall onto it, leaving it out where things can fall onto it etc etc. Everything that could and would happen in a regular home environment.
It’s been just over two weeks since I started the project, and in the early stages I still don’t want to do anything too drastic - that’s for later. So for now I’m just documenting what really happens when you do leave your slabs of ‘wax’ out of their protective covers, laid horizontally (one of the many things that a vinyl aficionado would never do), and just generally having a bad time - I’ve accidentally dropped plug sockets onto it’s docile body too many times to count. So here’s a nice recording that I just made, if you listen past two minutes thirty you’ll notice that the needle completely loses track of the grooves. So a track that was originally just over five minutes is cut in half.
Christian Marclay - Guitar Drag
This piece, by Christian Marclay, is another large influence to this project and as you can probably guess straight away, Vinyl Drag got it’s name from this piece. Also, the idea of degradation, which is apparent in this video is another contributing factor.
On Tuesday night it snowed here, so I thought I’d take the opportunity and left the poor record outside in the snow for 15 minutes, whilst the snow was still falling. After the 15 minutes were up I brought it in to dry naturally, which I was sure would probably ruin the record a fair bit, and I was right.
Let this be a lesson to all of you record junkies out there. Snow and vinyl do not go well together.
Here is a picture of the waveforms in Logic. The top waveform is of the track dated October 26th and the bottom waveform is of the track that I uploaded today. You can see how the volume levels have drastically decreased in the newer track - after the snow - and how the waveforms go rapidly out of synchronization towards the end which was due to my needle having a hard time staying in the grooves of the snow damaged record.
