Davis, Brian Joseph – “Definitive Host, The” – [Blocks Recording Club]

Louie Caliente   11/15/2017   A Library, CD

A collection of recordings from Canadian sound artist and film-maker Brian Joseph Davis. Most of the songs utilize pre-recorded material from other artists, manipulated or recast in interesting ways. The album deals with themes of copyright and censorship.

Rather than being meticulously orchestrated, the works rely heavily on randomness: CD player skips, destruction by fire, and highly-fallible human memory. Unlike many other conceptual works, these are very entertaining to listen to, and cover a wide range of genres including choral, glitch, spoken-word, pseudo-punk, and the overwhelming ambient noise hell-scape that is the final track.

The liner notes on the back provide a pretty acurate description of what’s in the package, but I’ll summarize here:

Eula (T1): The Sony End User License Agreement sung by a choir.

Five Box Sets Played on Fast-Forward, Then Edited Into Songs (T2-T6): This one is self-explanatory. Metal, soul, and other indescernibles.

Ten Banned Albums Burned, Then Played (T7-T15): Yup. Beatles, Sex Pistols, Mahler, Prince, Louie Louie, and more.

Voice Over (T16): A script composed from 5000 film taglines.

Yesterduh (T17-T18): What happens when you pay people on the street $5 to sing “Yesterday”, then mix the results. The second version is a particularly inspired solo.

Minima Moralia (T19): Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia as a punk 7″.

Greatest Hit (T20): All the tracks on a greatest hits album, all at once.