Missed Class: Audio Sampling

David Bryne and Brian Eno, America Is Waiting, 1986

With its simple, repeated vocals and a conversely varied array of musical styles, this piece is layered and complex, but very discordant in my eyes. The shifting music styles that have been integrated into the piece make it unpredictable and even the beat seems to be slightly off; I can't mentally grasp it . In this way, I immediately contrasted it with the idea of 'pop' music, which is meant to be easily remembered and understood, appealing to the widest demographic. I am intrigued by the concept that "America is waiting..." but to be honest I'm not quite sure as to who or what we may be waiting for. Could it be that, like with this piece, we are constantly left waiting for some familiar refrain?

Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), 1995

Unlike the previous piece, EBN is more cohesive with its included vocals and, even though the lines are sampled from various sources, they have been edited together to fit a more normalized sentence structure. The rhythm is upbeat and rather catchy, but I would not necessarily compare it to 'pop' in the way mentioned in my previous paragraph. The content, whether commenting socially or politically, reflects a culture of violence, reinforced by Mariah Carey's fervent high-pitched "alarm".

I appreciated the rather humorous use of movie/music figures, and was at the same time a bit disturbed by the violent and presumably non-fictional footage (?). Additionally, watching it with the video was very important for me because there was one moment at the end that left a lasting impression. As the edited clips get shorter and the pace faster, there begins to appear very short scenes of a man with a gun in black and white film (I don't know the origin of this clip). He is as quick to appear as he is to disappear, but at one point, the gun is facing the audience directly. perhaps it is the fleetingness of his appearance or the very clear image of a gun pointed straight at me, but I found this subtle addition to be a bit frightening.