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Osymyso The initial chime still resonates when a voice urges the music onwards with an impatient "let's go". Over an ambient soundscape a radiospeaker's voice from the 50' or 60's starts to introduce what we are about to hear. Just as some degree of relaxation settles in, the rhythm starts to pick up and things transition into a loop sounding much like film music set over hip hop beats. A haunting female voice starts asking "0? 5? why? 5? 0?" over and over, at one point answering it with a laconic "who knows...?".
2 minutes and 11 seconds of quality sample-rich mashup music. And then the fun is over... For now!
So that's it. The new Osymyso album up to this point. So clearly, this as far as the actual album review can go. But it is of course not all that can be said about this project, because it will evolve and grow, weekly, as a sort of public work-in-progress. For the first 50 weeks of 05 Osymyso plans to release 50 fragments of his new album in this manner. One down. Forty nine to go. Osymyso has set quite the challenge for himself.
Osymyso: I can't send you future fragments yet as I am completing them on a week by week basis. So I really have no idea what will be coming next. I do have a bunch of half finished ideas, but I don't really know what I will be doing for next weeks fragment. I like this notion, that the tracks are uploaded within the same hour I finished them, ultra-fresh.
Pixelsurgeon: And what gave you the idea to produce an album in such a way?
I was talking with a fellow DJ. After a long discussion about how difficult it was to get an album together, I made a claim, that I could easily do one track a week for a year. This was meant to be a joke. But then one thing led to another and I decided it might just be the best way for me to get my second album done.
(Welcome to the pailindrome, his first album, was released 1999 on a small label called sprawl imprint.)
Will this public process not put an enormous amount of pressure on you?
That was one of the reasons the whole idea came about. If I force myself to create these 50 ideas, then I will do it. If I don't, this time next year I probably wouldn't even have a 10 track album. I work well under pressure.
Well good, because we will certainly look forward to the weekly downloads.
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So what can we expect musically? Well, apparently nobody, not even Osymyso himself, knows for sure. But judging from his past releases we can take a pretty good guess. Osymsyo is of course known for his humerous mash-ups in the vein of the still hilarious pat'n'peg, based on samples from brit sitcom eastenders. Plus he has never been someone to shy away from a tough challenge. A few years ago, during his bootlegging days, he famously produced the 12 minute intro-inspection, a track made up entirely of intros from 101 pop songs (the complete tracklist is found here, the last track he used: the doors: the end, obviously). Quite an achievement. And the cheeky cut&paster has been known to create tracks picking up on current events. Within days after the arrest of Saddam Hussein in Iraq he released a track called "Wegoddim" based on that shockingly absurd "We got him" statement by Paul Bremer. Or when Chris Morris "re-arranged" Bush's State of the Union speech and released it as bushwhacked 2, Osymyso went ahead and set it to music.
Pixelsurgeon: The way you release this album is quite unique - via your website, in 50 fragments, on a weekly basis. How did that aspect of the project come about?
Osymyso: One of the things that appeals to me about this idea, is the way people will be able to give me feedback as I go along. It may well affect which ideas I choose to persue and how I go about mixing them all together. I wanted to give people a reason to come back to my website and show them that I am still out there making music, which was one of the driving forces behind the whole idea. I also want the whole thing to be free, so that there is nothing slowing down the process.
The first fragment is relatively short. Will all the fragments be about this length?
Most of the fragments will be short, which reflects the fact that nearly everything I make these days is short. I like it that way. There are some ideas that I might split, if there are 2 distinct movements and I think they are different enough. But as with everything else I am leaving all that open. If I make a 10 minute ambient soundscape and I like it enough, then I might just use that one week.
Will you use these fragments in the sequence you released them for your final mix?
The final mix will be completely re-arranged. I want it to sound as good as possible, so the order will definitely change. Some ideas may get lengthened, some others drastically shortened. The only rule is that all 50 will be in there somewhere.
You have always been a very "internet-friendly" musician releasing much of your material free for download. What has been your experience with this?
I just want people to hear what I am making and free mp3's is by far the fastest way to get your ideas out there. I would like to release it on different formats in the future, because a 12" vinyl in a full colour sleeve is such a nice thing to own; much better than a mp3 file. But the process is slow and expensive. So I always get put off. Some of my mp3's have reached thousands and thousands of people and a traditional release would never have done as well. There also seems little point in charging for my tracks as it would only put people off from downloading them.
How about copyright? Do you plan to protect your material?
Right now it all comes real natural. I just make what I make, when I feel like an idea is worth pursuing. If things really start to take off, then I will worry about these kinds of questions. A lot of producers are fighting the internet because of the ease in which songs can be copied for free. My philosophy is to let that very problem work for me. If I get a song out to 100,000 people, it's got to be a good thing, right? OK, I make no money from it directly, but the very fact that so many people now know about my music will push plenty of other work my way. And in that sense I do make a living out of giving songs away for free.
Who did the graphics for this project?
Openmind AKA Strictly Kev. He was there as the whole idea evolved. I said that I wanted to make 50 tracks in 05. He very casually mentioned, if you change the 's' in osymyso to '5' you get 05 and 50 and my jaw hit the ground. He then sent me some ideas for a logo and finally he did one where the 05ymy50 logo was made out of 50 blocks for the 50 downloads. I think he has done a fine job.
Anything else you feel like sharing?
Believe me I could waffle on for ever, but I'd better get back to work. I've got 49 tracks to make.
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