The Song of A Thousand Songs

This is where it all started, or rather, where it all middled.

The song itself is currently being recorded (it will always be 'currently recordng', that is what the song does). However The And Ensemble are at present recording their part of it which is set for release later in summer 2017.

Although the philosophical framework (the settting out of the concept in detail) has only just been submitted for publication, the idea that follows from this framework is already being applied to various contexts. In a recent publication by Routledge on 'Mixing' we explored how 'The Song of a thousand Songs' is mixed. We have posted a quote here that we think sums up the concept reasonably well:

'If songs are separated largely by non-musical signifiers (the composers, the song titles, etc.) we can “nullify endings and beginnings” (ATP 25) [Deleuze and Guattari], for these starts and finishes are nothing more than segmentation caused by the effect of imposing non-audio signifiers onto audio. When we do this, we cease to operate within a representational system. There are no longer identifiable ones of songs—the removal of the artificial beginnings and ends has shown that they are actually all joined together. In fact, it is not correct to say that they are joined at all, once we have removed the sticky labels marked ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ we see underneath that there is nothing but continuity. ‘The Song of a Thousand Songs’ is the result of an asignifying rupture that is “against the oversignifying breaks separating structures or cutting across a single structure” (ATP 9). It is no longer possible to remark that ‘one song is like another song’ because in the being of the multiplicity there is no other, it is all ‘The Song of a Thousand Songs’. Ones are not, multiplicity is.'

(Wilsmore and Johnson, 2017, p196)

Wilsmore R, Johnson, C (2017) The mix is. The mix is not. In Mixing Music (Perspectives on Music Production) Hepworth-Sawyer,R and Hodgson, J [eds]. Routledge: NY and London.