Sam Kidel explores Disruptive Muzak

The Young Echo man delivers a fiendishly amusing conceptual album for The Death Of Rave. 

Known for his work within Young Echo and as part of splinter group Killing Sound, Sam Kidel (pictured above looking pensive) has a sizeable clutch of solo material to his name under the El Kid alias that has surfaced on the constellation of semi-linked labels No Corner, left_blank and Astro:Dynamics. There is a clear line of stylistic separation between this El Kid material and the music Kidel makes under his given name, which veers closer to the abstract and the conceptual. For an example, see last year’s Untitled (Movements) album for Belgian label Entr’acte, a two track exercise in unsettling, long form drone that took inspiration from Henri Michaux’s drawing of the same name.

This conceptual bent is further explored on Disruptive Muzak, a new album from Kidel due on The Death Of Rave label later this month. Taking shape as two 20 minute long tracks, the album is the result of Kidel playing his own ‘muzak’ style ambient compositions down the phone to various government helplines and recording their puzzled responses. Clearly delighted to be releasing the album, The Death Of Rave call this approach a “stroke of Cagean and Kafkaesque compositional genius” that “reflects and refracts an aspect of the modern world in a way that arguably few other records have achieved.”

A press release goes on to offer Kidel the chance to explain his motivations in full as follows: “This piece came about during a research project into Muzak in 2015. The Muzak Corporation (recently rebranded as Mood Media) designs background music that can be used by businesses, factories, shopping centres or government offices to ensure that employees, clients and members of the public are upbeat and co-operative. Research by the Muzak Corporation found that Muzak must sound familiar, predictable, and non-disruptive to be effective.

Drawing from this research, I composed a series of pieces that I call Disruptive Muzak. These pieces share a similar sound palette to Muzak, but their structure is less familiar, less predictable and more disruptive. To test these compositions I called up government offices that use Muzak in their telephone queues and played them down the phone instead of my voice. The music I played and the officials’ responses were recorded and assembled into the piece that you hear on Side A. Side B contains the music only, that can be used to DIY.”

You can hear a brief clip of how the album sounds below, whilst a chance to fully immerse yourself full in Disruptive Muzak in a live space is available for those who reside in the Liverpool area with Metalculture hosting a listening session as part of their Vinyl Station series.

The Death Of Rave will release Disruptive Muzak by Sam Kidel on April 8

Tracklisting:

1. Disruptive Muzak
2. DIY Version

The Death Of Rave on Juno