Last time I reviewed an Everyday Samething release (Hydra’s Your Name), I discussed how the enigmatic imprint’s unique approach to tangible editions responds to “a point in time when physical music is much more ritual than utility to most.” That dialogue is only more relevant in the case of the newest entry in their catalog: Birdbath I, a brief bit of thoroughly DIY sound art by an unknown artist pressed as an “extremely limited” run of four business cards with the album artwork on the front and a QR code linking to a youtube upload of the music on the back, priced at a cool hundred quid each. By design, there is quite literally no incentive to own one of these objects other than the fact that only a handful were or will be made; they do not include a code for lossless download, nor is the youtube video solely accessible via the QR.
It’s a rarity parody that’s both amusing and incisive. Though scarcity in the underground music community is at its root simply a financial and logistical necessity, it has become some sort of benchmark for “legitimate” ownership and is now often intentional (read: artificial), an evolution with its bleakest results manifesting as limited digital NFT releases such as those distributed by Nina Protocol. Made-to-order imprints like Matching Head and experimental prank editions like those of Everyday Samething are deliberately dug potholes in that all-too-smooth road into the cancerous depths of capitalism—and the satirical aspect of Birdbath I lets us muse on what might be playing over the speakers in that cursed clown-car. The answer? Subliminal propaganda mutterings, dictaphone smear, sabotaged mass-media broadcasts, the best and brightest of this generation’s elevator music. A funereal radio play to score the most boring apocalypse imaginable. Hard to describe how desolate the sixth untitled section is: static-cracked sounds of idly tapped fingers and shuffled decks of cards, the dried-out signifieds of human presence passively decapitated from their referents. The material, which was anonymously submitted with next to no context other than the request for the unusual delivery method, could not be better aligned with it. Twenty-five minutes of that elusive superposition of forbidden revelation and utter uselessness that seems to be the only relevant art for our times… I will not rest until I own all four copies.
Noise Not Music 