Thomas Park, who records as Mystified, is a frequent participant in the weekly Disquiet Junto projects (at soundcloud.com), and a prolific member of the international array of musicians who contribute to netlabels. When posting some recent rewordings of an old 78rpm recording of “The Star Spangled Banner,” he mentioned, generously, that a recent Junto project was part of his inspiration. In making something new from the old recording of the national anthem, he emphasizes the gleaming — the four versions he has posted move from rousing, octave-leaping exuberance to something spectral and spacious. The third version in particular is simultaneously vaporous and introspective in ways one might not associate with the source material (MP3).
Full set available for free download at archive.org. More on Mystified at mystifiedmusic.com.
Update 2012.04.06: After posting this, I was informed by Park/Mystified that John Tocher was the person who introduced him to the source audio, not the person who recorded it. The source recording is, in fact, anonymous. This article has been corrected to reflect this information.
2 Comments
Thanks, Marc, and thanks for touching on the controversial aspect of the source material. When I made the remixes, I tried to avoid any comic or overly ominous sounds. I still expected at least one or two people to comment negatively on my work just based on the material. Yet, so far, I have only heard positive things. Either people are more relaxed about the anthem nowadays, or, (quite possibly), the parties who might be offended have not tuned in.
Yeah, I can hear that — you didn’t strike a balance, which suggests compromise, so much as find a righteous path.
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[…] drop by for the whole article, or even to comment if you feel so inclined. Thanks again to Marc! https://disquiet.com/2012/04/02/national-anthem-star-spangled-thomas-park-mystified/ Posted by Thomas Park at 04:59 Trackbacks Trackback specific URI for this entry No […]