• APPROPRIATE CHRISTMAS
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  • tune in, turn on, doom out

the appropriate christmas is a audio mix of some 2400 christmas tracks that i've downloaded over the years. the collection is mostly compromised of albums published in the english speaking world, although there are exceptions (most notably swedish albums).

having grown up with the image of christmas being an all-family happy happening, i'm one of those people bitter about promises never fullfilled, presents never delivered, families never being what they should be. there's a reason why the suicide rate is it's highest during christmas, and maybe by listening to the ambience of christmas destilled it's possible to get a distance to all the expectations. or maybe it just further drives you into a delerium.

either way, the track is available here for your listening experience. it's of a convenient 75 minute lenght, burnable onto one cd-r, and would make for a good gift to someone who takes christmas too seriously, be they too jolly or too miserable about it.

download the track by right-clicking on this link. [53mb mp3]
David Bendit has mirrored the file here.
or better yet, use this pirate bay torrent.

if you put up a mirror of the file, i would be much obliged. i really cannot afford the excessive bandwidth, and will pull the file if i get close to the limit. i got inner children to feed, y'know?

i haven't bothered doing any cover art or somesuch for this production, but if you feel so inclined i would happily link to it.

as a source of inspiration, let me show you a product a swedish company that does ready-to-heat tv-dinners is offering; i believe that if you would have to find a product that perfectly matches the audio i've done, this would be it:
findus jultallrik.

the main ingredient of christmas is apparently skimmed milk and cabbage. i'm thinking i'll just print out that enlarged image and use it as a cd-cover.

the actual composition of the track is as follows:

  • 2380 individual tracks, from 140 albums
  • 8 seconds extracted from each track
the resulting clips randomly assigned to four simultanious channels, each channel filtered into four frequency slots:
  • 0-130 hz
  • 254-662 hz
  • 922-2000 hz
  • 10100-25800 hz
why those frequencies? because it sounds good, and keeps the individual tracks on a just-barely recognizable level.

i'm quite certain that i've spend more time on this project than any of the individual artists spend on any of the tracks. i don't have a computer of my own, so i've had to jump between whatever i've gotten my hands on. in the process i've learned the perils of using windows xp for anything other than boiling blood, some apple-scripting to cut up the tracks as well as moving and randomly renaming, and the wonderful world of half-assed vst plugins and the full-assed functionality of much of what passes as "shareware".

having said that, i'd like to thank the people who keep making software available to us unwashed masses:

two years ago i made another christmas sound project, named "fulla konststudenter sjunger julsånger" ("drunk art students singing christmas carols") which resulted in something just as awful as the title implies. it was great fun, and i still consider our rendition of "do they know it's christmas" to be one of the more fitting ones considering the horrendousness of the original song.

the method of production was quite simple:

  • download midi files of christmas songs.
  • arrange a few of these songs in reason while very tired.
  • print out lyric sheets.
  • buy wine and beer and snacks.
  • invite friends and get them drunk.
  • do a re-take after two hours because you forgot to turn the microphone on.
  • mix and burn.
  • sell the resulting 3-track mini cd to unsuspecting christmas shoppers.

if you wish to download the drunk art students sing christmas carols "album", please click on this link. [12mb, zip-file]

if you have any questions or comments, email me at: mateusz[neuter-sp@mmers]monocultured.com.

or why not leave a comment on the blog: monocultured/blog.

and yes, even though english isn't my first language, i am so conscious on the play of words in the title for this work. see, i'm all about appropriation.