Marcel Duchamp meets the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
October 20, 2015 5:54 PM   Subscribe

Vinyl Terror & Horror are Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen, two Danish DJs now based in Berlin. They are not your average DJ duo.

Records and turntables alike are cut apart, disassembled, melted, altered with materials such as sandpaper and adhesive tape, and reassembled on the fly into astonishing contraptions. This avant-garde approach to the art of DJing combines elements of Dada, chance operations, kinetic sculpture, installation art, and noise music.

Vice writeup.

Live at the Kumu Art Museum, Estonia, 2013.
posted by escape from the potato planet (11 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great find - it's reminiscent of Walter Kitundu's modified turntables project, with a touch of Margaret (Pharmakon) Chardiet.
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:11 PM on October 20, 2015


Whoa; I'd enjoyed Pharmakon's recorded work, but not seen live footage. Her physicality onstage really works with the music. Thanks for the links.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:25 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wonderful! The first video reminds me of Christian Marclay's early work with records, especially 1000 Cycles, only taken to crazy-contraption extremes.
posted by ardgedee at 7:10 PM on October 20, 2015


More John Cage than Marcel Duchamp. They both probably would have been amused.
posted by crazylegs at 7:39 PM on October 20, 2015


I like how there are all these different levels. If you know what I mean.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:12 PM on October 20, 2015


Oh, I do like this!
posted by comealongpole at 11:34 PM on October 20, 2015


I can't find the artistry or musicality in this at all.
posted by synthetik at 7:43 AM on October 21, 2015


Wonderful!
The first video reminds me of Christian Marclay's early work with records
Yeah, it's very Marclay-ish - here he is doing very much the same sort of thing, but horizontally.

I think Nam June Paik probably kicked off this genre/practice/whatever with Random Access Music. Can't think of anything earlier than that, though someone at the Radiophonic Workshop, or the musique concrete types at the GRMC must've used similar techniques?

Also, this made me think of the brilliant Diskono label. They used to release music like this - not as in stuff that sounds like this, actual 7"s with multiple off-centre holes, etched vinyl, records made from other records sliced up and glued back together, &c. I think one release was a paper bag full of broken bits of vinyl and sundry MiniDisc innards.
posted by jack_mo at 8:00 AM on October 21, 2015


Superb! Absolutely love this - and, being a bad man, have forwarded it to a couple of my most audiophile OCD purists. Rather puts Aphex Twin's sandpaper trick in context.

I particularly liked the pull back that revealed the arm right at the top of the stack, which promised that there was much more to come but coyly refused to say how much of what for how long was going to come in between.

Noise magnificent. Concept delightful. Executed with aplomb. Top marks.
posted by Devonian at 8:43 AM on October 21, 2015


Yeah, I almost went with the Cage reference, but there's an abrasive / punk-rock / fuck-you vibe to this that made me think Duchamp. Cage was happy-go-lucky; Duchamp was darkly sardonic.

jack_mo, I didn't know about Diskono—I absolutely love that.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:39 AM on October 21, 2015


synthetik: "I can't find the artistry or musicality in this at all."
You have my pity.
posted by brokkr at 11:33 AM on October 21, 2015


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