← more from
Safety Records
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Soft Power

by Contretemps

supported by
veins62
veins62 thumbnail
Mark Richardson
Mark Richardson thumbnail
Sasha Frere-Jones
Sasha Frere-Jones thumbnail
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Purchasable with gift card

     

1.
No Myth 06:04
2.
Real Objects (For Trish Keenan) 05:55
download
3.
Iaora 01:06
4.
Data Janitor (For Ken Vandermark & Lou Reed) 07:26
5.
The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age 10:09
6.
Sophisticated Arrangements by Brilliant Men (For Björk) 00:22
7.
Trees 01:12
8.
Untitled (1996) 03:02
9.
Plux Gold (Palace Music for Sufjan) 02:17
10.
Corpse as Corpse 00:30
11.
A Thirsty Fish 00:05
12.
The Fourth Wall (For Merce Cunningham) 01:51
13.
Subtitled (No Sense of Scale) 08:28

about

Soft Power is the first in an ongoing series of sample-based records I'm releasing as Contretemps.

In late 2019 I began recording improvisations made exclusively of samples taken from my library of MP3s. Over the next nine months I produced more than 40 hours of improvised music, pulling in snippets from roughly 600 songs. The best moments have been edited down to album-length releases, starting with this one.

The results are more akin to musique concrète than radio-friendly electronica, and part of the fun of listening to Soft Power is in recognizing familiar melodies and voices; across the album's thirteen tracks, one can hear fragments of music by Low, John Cage, Múm, Broadcast, the Velvet Underground, Mouse On Mars, Sufjan Stevens, James Blake, Flaming Lips, Xiu Xiu, Gastr Del Sol, U.S. Maple, Crass, Björk, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sinead O'Connor and many more.

The ongoing series of records will pull from the same improvisations as Soft Power, showcasing samples of tracks by Tortoise, Hot Chip, Peter Gabriel, R.E.M., Radiohead, Faust, Wire, Brian Eno, Portishead, Aphex Twin, Leonard Cohen, Whitehouse, Autechre, Red Krayola, Boredoms, Shabazz Palaces, Sonic Youth, Aimee Mann, and Suicide.

At its heart, Soft Power and the subsequent albums from the series are an experiment in open-source creativity, and assumes fair use with respect to the samples I've sourced. However, I don't wish to thumb my nose at the original artists, whose music I love. With that in mind, please support the musicians listed above.

Thank you for listening.

credits

released February 3, 2023

Full list of samples can be found at:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BnG61wZCkVKkPrhWLnr-Dbpyf7GAfT4U7_ojeMI0xxo/edit#gid=0

Livestreamed improvisations are viewable via Facebook:
www.facebook.com/contretempsmusic

license

tags

about

Contretemps image

Contretemps Chicago, Illinois

Contretemps is a sample-based music project by Joel Ebner, a musician and artist from Chicago.

contact / help

Contact Contretemps

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Contretemps, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Fabiana Palladino stops by to talk about her mesmeric debut LP.
listen now