A Musical Fungus Among Us

MP3s: Fungal remix excerpts of New Order, Soft Cell, The Eagles, The Beastie Boys and Gordon Taylor.

Mold and Music go way back. Remember Moldy Oldies, before they disappeared from the airwaves thanks to Jack FM? Or how about Moldy Figs, the sarcastic term applied to swing and big-band fans who snubbed post-war Jazz innovations like Be-Bop (think: the record collecting crowd from the film Ghost World). And then there was that one armed drummer for The Barbarians, Mouldy. (Listen to Mouldy's theme song from Charlie's 1/10/05 show in streaming realaudio).

OK, his real name was Moulty. But no matter. He only had one hand. And hard core music fans know that mold and music go hand in fuzzy hand. What self-respecting (or more accurately, self-loathing) record collector hasn't rifled through a crate of water-damaged LPs that were yellow and grey with basement mold?

For several years now, an Australian scientist named Cameron Jones (and a lot of other people) are applying fungus and molds to the playing surface of CD, specifically to play with the mold's audio properties. And you'd be surprised what it sounds like. Rather than muffling the audio, it adds echo, audio holes and glitching, all effects that people pay good money to achieve electronically. Jones and his fellow molecular remixers also use microscopically thin layers of plastics to effect audio, not to mention movies, photography and artwork.

Jones did a one-hour DJ set at a club in which he played only songs which had been altered with fungus, bacteria or synthetic nano-substances. Here are a few MP3 samples from his set, all for download:

Tainted Love - Soft Cell

Primitive Notion - New Order

Hotel California - The Eagles

Paul Revere - The Beastie Boys

And here's a remix Jones did of Australian artist Gordon Taylor's track, Cracked Sky (MP3).

The reverb effect which the mold sometimes has reminds me of the "ghosting" that used to occur on reel to reel tape - as the tape circled the reel, one piece of tape's audio would "bleed" or stamp it's audio data onto the section of tape it was wrapped around, causing a delayed echo effect.

Here is a page of stills from a Superman DVD which Jones treated with micro-plastics. The visual representation of nano-particles on digital information makes it easier to imagine how mold can achieve these audio effects.

There's more info on Jones' Molecular Media Project page, and more audio samples of fungal remixes on Nanosound.com.

And while we're on the topic of mold, here is what the WFMU Blog looks like if you lock it up in a damp basement. Give it time. Mold grows slowly.

Thanks to Listener Taso for alerting me to all this!

Comments

[Guest]

Or the Mary Lou Williams song, A Fungus Amung Us, played by Bob Brainen just last Sunday.

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/15662

Or try this, a whole festival devoted to the Humongus Fungus:

http://www.crystalfalls.org/FUNGUS%20FEST.htm

or from http://www.annabellemagazine.com/annabelle%20issue%201/annabelle_morning_announce.html

The 12th Annual Humungus Fungus Festival

There's fungus among us! The hero of the Humungus Fungus Festival is a gigantic 1,500 year-old mushroom covering 37 acres and weighing 11 tons. Scientists found the giant 'shroom outside Crystal Falls, Michigan, in the 1980's and it wasn't long before the town saw the fungal possibilities. If you go to the Humungus Fungus fest expecting to feast your eyes on a giant mushroom, you will be disappointed to learn that the celebrated fungiform is in the forest, covered by a protective layer of leaves and humus. In that case this festival should be called "The Humungus Fungus Covered by Humus" festival.

[craig]

ummm.... that's MOULTY.

[krokus]

Yes, it IS Moulty, which segues quite nicely into the bit about chickens...you know, 'cause they're birds, and they, like, moult.

[Blair Sterrett]

Isn't there a song called "There's A Fungus Among Us" by Hugh Barrett & The Victors?

[HRian]

I'd like to hear Mouldy Old Dough by Lieutenant Pigeon mixed with that brilliant fungus.

[Ron Shaffer]

RE: "There's A Fungus Among Us" was a 45' inspired by Chicago WLS Disc Jocky, Dick Biondi in 1960. Bioni, was on the cutting edge of whacky radio. He was the most popular DJ in the Chicgo area during the early era of Rock & Roll. He would often say whacky things like "There's A Fungus Among Us" in a deep haunting voice. After several months of people calling writing him to find out what it meant. Finally, he started saying there was a R&R song by that name. He kept listeners guessing and instisting he was making it up over several weeks. He kept retorting that there really is a song, "There's A Fungus Among Us". Then he would start saying he would soon play it, building up skeptatism as well as believers anxiously awaiting.

Finally, he did play it. We all figured he got a local band to put together a song and record it. He did play it. It was no classic and obviously not main-stream talent. Apparently, the record started selling, but no hit. He continued to play it often for a few months.

I believe that within a couple of years, WLS, after Biondi getting more and more outragous, finally let him go. His cousin was friends with one of my college roomates. I believe he told me Dick Biondi went on to a radio station in L.A. and was popular for some time.
Ron Shaffer

[Ron Shaffer]

Opps. I think it was 1958 or 1959