Four Minutes And  Thirty-Three Seconds Of Your Life You Will Never Get Back

Running Time: 4:33

Released On: "Ever Present" - Various Artists (15 tracks)

Label: Institute For Alien Research

Release Date: 1st June 2023

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

 (The Original 5 x 1:00 Suite)

Originally released on 27th December 2022 as "Five Minutes Of Your Life You Will Never Get Back" on "Last Action & Friends 2: Return To The Underground (Part 2)". However, on 21st February, I noticed Last Action's Bandcamp was down and checked with Carlo that everything was okay. It wasn't, and that was the first he knew of it. That was it, gone forever, no reason given. It's in their terms and conditions that they can do that, no explanation required apparently. Seems a little unreasonable to not at least inform him though...

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W O W !  Yeah, the 516 tracks thing, that's not a misprint. Last Action & Friends 2: Return To The Underground - what an amazing feat! It's hard to imagine the amount of time, work and dedication (and maybe a little smattering of insanity) that must have gone into such a gargantuan task. Carlo Steegen, we salute you. And this isn't all of it; the whole compilation is actually 1,046 tracks, which he had to split into three volumes coz Bandcamp was "acting funky". If I was him, I'd have a good shout at them for preventing him issuing what must surely be a record breaking compilation in a single release format (though he's probably broken Alexey Kondart's heart regardless), coz their 'Help Center' says, and I quote;

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" T h e r e   i s   n o   l i m i t   o n   t h e   s i z e   o f   a l b u m s . "

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Apparently there is. Ho hum. But anyway, if you want yourself an instant Encyclopaedia Undergroundica, set aside several hours for the download at your earliest possible convenience and it shall be yours!

To be honest, we had absolutely no idea we were to be part of anything quite so the ultimate megaproject, came as something of a shock, I can tell ya. It all started last year on February 1st when this turns up in my inbox from Carlo in Belgium;

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"I'm working on the new 'Last Action & Friends 2' compilation & was wondering if you'd be interested to contribute a track for this. It would be an honor to have you on board. It's one track each project. Greatly looking fwd to hear from you."

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Well, me and Skit love doing things for new (to us) labels, it draws us outside of our comfort zone, stops us from just recording for our own amusement, so the answer was, of course, a resounding yes. We paid Last Action's Bandcamp a visit or two, aiming to get a feel for its character,  what may be  unique about it.  The thing  that really stuck

out as different on his own releases (Last Action is his recording project too) was long titles and very short songs. There were tracks like When Suffocation Released Their Influential Human Waste Mini Album, Little Did They Know They Were Talking About The Majority Of Mankind and running times ranging from 4 seconds up to a minute and twenty-nine. The album, if that's the right word for a release that has seven tracks and totals less than three minutes, was called Life Is Short. And that kind of set us thinking; what if we could condense life, from cradle to the grave, into five minutes? Ladies and gentlemen, we present...

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Five Minutes Of Your Life You Will Never Get Back

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Minute 1: Dissipater K - birth, you come rushing into the world, everything is new and exciting, so much yet to experience...

Minute 2: The Thinking Man's Joystick - ever wondered how much of your life you waste on trivial pastimes when you're young...

Minute 3: We Love Squelching (Extended Mix) - reproduction, the continuation of species, in this long (well, minute) version of the 2 second original we did for Tim Burkland's forthcoming special cassette release...

Minute 4: Zeit, Zeit, Zeit - then you get to that point where it all becomes samey, one day merges into another, you wonder where the years go as your life simply ticks away...

Minute 5: The Flatline Waltz - until the inevitable end, because nobody gets out of this alive...

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As you can imagine, when you go to that kind of trouble, spending time doing the research, all so you can conceive and create something especially unique for a particular label, what you don't really want is to find yourself as track 346. Out of 516. On Volume 2. And your artwork that you also did specially doesn't get used. But, to be honest, it was hard to stay pissed off about it for long, simply because it truly is an awe inspiring task this guy has undertaken. All things considered, it's simply impossible not to be happy being a part of it, so we forgive you, Carlo. But next time, we're asking questions first!!!

U P D A T E   F R O M   C A R L O   S T E E G E N   -   2 3 r d   A p r i l   2 0 2 3 :

"LAST ACTION IZ STILL ALIVE... For a split second there, it looked like things weren't quite working out as planned when Bandcamp erased & permanently deleted our page including 502 (!) unique releases getting exterminated but our emotional rollercoaster has come to a halt now... We've moved ON. Point of this post ---> Last Action ain't goin' out like that & will focus on physical (read : REAL) releases from now on. There's some alienating cassettes crawlin' out of the oven soon. Limited Editions because they don't understand. Labels please get in touch, let's do this !"

GODSPUNK VOL. 24