Thursday, October 8, 2015

Longhorn Speedway (1997)

"I’ve always relished the low-fidelity of a race track’s PA. There’s simply no other effects-pedal that gives one the same distortion as a speedway’s sound-system. On March 19 1997, I got access to the Longhorn Speedway in Austin for a few days leading up to a show by Survival Research Labs. I wanted to experience what it would be like to hear one’s favourite sounds transformed through such a device. Keeping to the motif, I started with playing car crash sounds over the race track’s PA. I blew the whole sound-system in about a hour. It took all afternoon the next day to fix the amp, and re-wire all the horns around the oval. On the third day I was soon to find out that no matter which one of my favourite sounds I put through the PA, it would always end up sounding just like a car crash in progress..."

GX Jupitter-Larsen

You can hear a brief excerpt here.