Pachyderm: Finest early days tape collage.
Download Pachyderm (MP3)
Pachyderm started life in spring 1994 as the third collection of recordings, then under the name "Forgiveness", that would become Eucci and The Audio ELW. While most of the preceding recordings were generally two-layer audio collages, typically of radio or some instrument, Pachyderm broke through by building in many layers. This was done without any multitrack techniques. It was accomplished initially by just using spliced-together headphone cables and swapping a pair of tapes back and forth, adding in more layers and instruments and taking advantage of cheap walkman hacks like jimmying the 'auto-reverse' switch to activate all four cassette heads to get backwards audio. This portion in particular was recorded through March 1994 and constitutes most of what you hear between the 06:20 and 28:00.
That portion was worked on again in May of 1994, using a DJ Mixer to add in some more layers - in stereo! - and fix a few problems with the raw original.
By the end of summer 1994, the overture and a long tail portion were added, making the whole of Pachyderm which is finally released here. Again this was all done by layering and simple splicing, swapping tapes back and forth in longer and longer takes.
The final version, clocking in at nearly 50 minutes, presented a problem: it filled up one side of a C100 cassette neatly, but there was never a B-side which was worthy of releasing along with it. I did have a candidate title, "But over things so slow this old man weighs", but various attempts to record something fitting never panned out. A few treatments were done in 1999 (for year five) and 2004 (for year ten), but none saw widespread release.
Until today. Bearing its initial intended 'rivcs' release number, here is Rive 009: Pachyderm.
This was my favorite recording from that first year. I walked around with it in my walkman constantly. The first Audio ELW / Forgiveness release was "The Mind Sounds Off", but it wasn't until Pachyderm that I really felt like I had a soundtrack for my young, foolish, and fractured mind.
.JPS, Sunhil, 2011 02 21