Holier Butterscotch

Running Time: 0:00.05 (50 milliseconds)

Released On: The Floppy LOL - Various Artists (37 tracks)

Label: Very Small (VS0126)

Release Date: 3rd June 2024

Format: Floppy Disk / Some Download Options

Buy Link: Internet Archive

So, Skit sees this post on Facebook...

Xsdtrtyu Xsardtyty
27 May at 13:18 
hii
Very Small is gonna be making a comp on floppy disck
track(s) have to be 0.05 sec max, images 50x50 max, textx 10bytes max
thanks ☺

Sorry, what? It must mean 5 seconds, just the way they've written it, surely? Yeah, five hundredths of a second? That'd be mad, wouldn't it? Apparently not. Skit asked. 50 milliseconds it was. Oh, come on, how could any serious experimentalist resist? Image at 50 pixels square? No problemo, top right, sorted. Text at 10 bytes? Well, even just the shortest format of our web address was 13 bytes, but he cut us a bit of slack on that. Nice man. Which just left the question of what kind of sound would have any impact at all at just 50 milliseconds?

"Skit go garage for power tools," he nodded excitedly, "we try them all, yas!"

"Can't we just try something in the house? Something that will be easy to set up? Something that won't leave dirt all up the stairs for Sam to tell us off about?"

"So long it noisy!" He really talks like this.

Electric toothbrush. Have you ever tried having an extra five minutes snooze while your partner is using an electric toothbrush next door in the bathroom? Noisy. Sorted.

Sam's electric toothbrush gets ready for its big moment on the mic...

The Package;

Very Small are based in Ukraine, so not in the best position to be able to mail a copy of the finished product to the UK right now, but they did send us a photo and Google-drove us the contents. 37 music tracks providing a total of 45 seconds of sounds. Most contributors had conformed to the 50 millisecond rule, whilst some had been indulged, RDKPL, for example, with a 5 second excerpt of 240224_01, which must surely count as a 12-incher under the circumstances. One band, Qeqertarsuatsiaat Fisheritualists, really gets into the spirit of the miniature and provides a complete album of 50 millisecond works, the whole 14 track experience of Swim Fanatic Swim And Let Coral Be Your Graveyard coming in at less than one second. Another, Apus Apus, are allowed to take liberties, contributing an interminably lengthy 28 second epic. You also get 18 bits of artwork, for which I'd recommend a magnifying glass, a mere four text files that contain a total of 30 characters (guess a lot of folk didn't have the bottle to try slipping through three extra bytes like us, bad asses that we are, albeit ones that go to bed at quite respectable times these days), and one 37.5kb file that our system couldn't identify as anything other than 'File'. It was titled see 'title', which was the name of one of the text files, so we did see it, and it just said " . ", so long as we know. It's all a bit chaotic, which I assume is part of what the project's is all about, but what we really loved about it is just that... well, it is SO different! 

Quantum Music: The Science Of The Very Small

by The Magic Bullet Verification Team

I know what you're thinking, is this for real? We weren't sure either, and they always say if something seems to good to be true, it probably isn't, so we set out to investigate. Yup, Very Small is a  genuine  project,  a  sub-label  of Genetic Trance,  and  this  really is

their 126th release. If you weren't convinced by their Internet Archive, you'll also find them all listed on DISCOGS, including 'albums' from a few artists we've either worked with, released tracks by and / or played on our radioshow, such as; RDKPL, The Owl, Shaun Robert, Filmy Ghost and El Zombie Espacial. How did we miss this before? It's no use, we'll have to do them an album...

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