Ostracism On Principal Thoroughfare

Running Time: 4:33

Released On: "Flexi Disc Cut Ups & Other Vinyl Extrusions" - Various Artists (15 tracks)

Label: Institute For Alien Research

Release Date: 12th December 2019

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

Four days later, Skit and I sat down to look at our fourth musique concrète project, the theme for this was flexi discs, as part of an IFAR series on the general theme of records. I guess you'd have to be clocking on a bit to remember flexis, very thin flexible (no shit) bits of vinyl, often given away as promotional freebies in music mags. I still remember the first such flexi disc I ever owned; it came with the New Musical Express on April 29th 1972 (the week after the issue in the image, prophetically promising it 'next week'!), a preview with excerpts from the forthcoming Rolling Stones album, "Exile On Main Street", for which the title of this piece is a play on. I did a bit of research online and found some photos, and while the tracks all seem familiar, I didn't remember it being circular (I'm still convinced it was square) or even that it had two sides (it did), featuring Curved Air (I know because it was the reason I bought their really excellent "Phantasmagoria" LP) and the unfortunately named Fanny on the flipside.

"I've got lots of Curved Air." I excitedly told Skit.

"Bet you never had any Fanny, har har!"

"No," I confirmed, "I never liked Fanny much. Why are you rolling around the floor in hysterics?"

Duly inspired, we went on a hunt for those strange videos online where somebody goes "watch me putting a flexi disc on my record player and pressing play." It wasn't the music on these things we were interested in, it was the bits in between; the mechanics of the tonearm lifting and dropping, the surface noise as the stylus moves toward the recording at the beginning, and beyond it at the end, the odd scratches and beats et al. And those are the sounds we built this track with, Skit showing me the interesting effects you can get with pitch-shifting, cross-phase and amplified beat-looping. Et voila, hopefully a track that is every bit as interesting as the artwork that accompanies it.

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