Reviewing every track on Visionaire No. 53: Sound (Various Artists, 2007) part 1

Since my first compilation review was so unpopular, I thought I’d alienate whatever readers I have left by doing an even longer one. Just kidding, I’m doing it because it’s fun! For me!

Visionaire No. 53 is the 53rd “issue” of Visionaire, an American art and fashion periodical. #53 was published on five 12" vinyl records in a sleek black UFO-shaped capsule. Each record is a picture disc featuring a commissioned piece of original artwork per side.

The audio from all five LPs is also included on two compact discs. For this write-up, I’ll be listening to high-quality 320 kb/s Mp3 rips. There are 116 tracks, 58 per disc, and the average track length is a minute and 10 seconds.

It’s odd that the music of five LPs fits on only two discs, since a CD can hold 80 minutes of music and a record can hold 44.¹ At 134m25s, the whole album could’ve fit on three records (132 minutes) with the omission of only a couple tracks. Each record holds half as much audio as it potentially could. I guess they wanted to put big visible gaps between tracks so it’s easier to select one, or maybe they wanted the set to include 10 artworks and not 6; but if I were a record-listener, that wouldn’t make up for the burden of flipping or changing discs twice as often, four more times than should be necessary.

But hey, it’s 2007, the records aren’t for playin’, they’re for lookin’! To drive this point home, they also include a “record player” in the form of a toy car that, if used as intended, will destroy your records. No joke, they themselves refer to it as a “vinyl killer”² on the store page.

I don’t know what including an implement of vinyl destruction with your records is supposed to imply, but it doesn’t feel like a vote of confidence for the music.

Speaking of the music, how is the music? That’s what I’m here to find out. The same disclaimer and rules from the last review still apply. I’m not an expert on music—or anything else, except what I like and what I don’t—but I have a broad range of eclectic interests that gives me an edge when reviewing compilations. However, I can’t usually parse song lyrics, so I’ll mostly be judging the music based on its sound rather than its meaning. No endorsement or denouncement of the lyrical content should be inferred unless I specifically call it out.

Each piece of music (or sound art) will be awarded 0-4 points (💿) based on how much I like listening to it. If I think a track is exemplary, I can award it one bonus point (💎) and if I think it’s despicable, I can give it a demerit (🥀). At the end I’ll tally up the points and divide by the total possible to get its % score. This post is fucking long enough, so I’ll be reviewing disc 2 at a later date. Disc 1 can earn up to 232 points; let’s see how it stacks up. Get it? Stacks up? Like on a record changer? Good one, me.

The Reviews

I probably can’t upload this one to the internet archive, because the publisher claims to still be selling it for a thousand bucks. But it’s on the internet if you know where to look, and I’ll include links to other places tracks are available when I can. Tracks #15, 38 and 44 can be heard in the 11/29/21 episode of The Arbitrarium on WFMU. Track #25 can be heard in the 07/18/25 episode. (I’ll be including timestamped links as I go.)

1. Alexander Mcqueen & John Gosling - Supercali part 1 💿💿💿💿

The disc is off to a strong start. This is a great noisy pounding electronic piece with Liars/Fuck Buttons energy. I want to hear the other parts. ‹4› [Youtube] (⚠️ video contains some illustrated nudity)

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2. Ad-Rock - The Dog Park Mix 💿💿💿

I had visions of a cheesy “Jingle Dogs” track, but this mixes up dog bark recordings with a funky beat and scratching to create a cool new sound. Sounds like an unused Jet Set Radio Future track. ‹3› [Youtube]

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3. David Byrne - Polaroid Picture 💿

This isn’t clicking with me. It has overpowering nasally vocals and a childlike singsongy melody that I find unnerving, and not in a good way. I’m no expert, but I might call it “Lynchian”; try as I might, I have not yet developed a taste for that particular brand of strangeness. ‹1› [Youtube]

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4. Lalo Schiffrin - Ein Kleine Jazz Musik 💿💿

I.e., “a little jazz music”. This starts with pompous classical chamber music for people who love looking smart and/or wearing powdered wigs. It cuts back and forth with familiar but competent jazzy riffs. It’s a somewhat interesting contrast. ‹2›

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5. Karl Bartos - 0_1 💿💿💿

A minute of lovely electronic trills. ‹3›

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6. Cat Power - (Newborn) Empty Shell 💿💿💿

A gentle folk rock song with metallic acoustic guitar and pretty singing. The lo-fi recording helps it sound distant and haunting. ‹3›

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7. Mario Testino - Untitled 💿💿

A short sample-heavy electroclash track with a deep bumpy beat and mysterious cut-up voice samples. There are camera shutter sounds, so I think it’s people talking during a fashion shoot. The samples are a little annoying. ‹2›

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8. Ryuichi Sakamoto - Karesansui 💿💿💿

Effective atmospheric horror music. Ambient drones with creepy acoustic doom sounds. Very striking noise. ‹3›

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9. Pamelia Kurstin - Off the top of my head 💿💿💿💿

If I needed to sum up the vibe of this set so far in one word, it’s “creepy”. Kurstin³ (now Stickney) is best known for playing the theramin, an instrument I usually don’t like for how uniformly uncontrollable it sounds; but if the music in this piece is being played on a theramin—it may be some other kind of synth, I'm not sure—it’s composed and deliberate, and doesn’t sound like any theramin music I’ve ever heard (i.e., it doesn’t sound like a 1950s UFO movie.) This is evil clown music for a haunted hall of mirrors—in a good way. ‹4›

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10. Mark Romanek - Willow 🥀

This track is 61 seconds of baby noises. ‹-1›

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11. U2 - Human Rights ❌

A guy murmurs or shouts the word “everyone” over and over while dissonant strings whine. There’s some heavy breathing, then a lady reads articles 3-6 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a dullard's idea of what serious high art is supposed to sound like. Pretentious twaddle. ‹0›

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12. Nick Rhodes - Control Freak 💿💿💿

Funky 80s electro with some cheesy buttrock guitar. Not bad, but I’d like it better if the guitar sounded different. ‹3› [Youtube] (⚠️ strobe warning)

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13. Mila Jovovich - Lady from Abbey 💿💿

A triple-meter ballad like something from a docu-drama about medieval times, or a big-budget western fantasy RPG. It’s not unpleasant, and it’d be fine as incidental music, but on its own it doesn’t do much for me. ‹2›

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14. Michael Stipe ft. Miguel Bosé - Untitled 💿💿💿💿

A neat instrumental track with humming, snapping, plucky guitar, poppy percussion and diverse layered synth sounds. Very weird and good. ‹4›

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15. Linda Evangelista - I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day 🥀

This lady is a fashion model famous for claiming in a 1990 Vogue interview that she doesn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.⁴ The event was apparently notorious enough to still be relevant when this compilation was put together 17 years later. This track features Evangelista repeating the phrase three times in an exaggerated catty voice, timestretched to make it more excruciating. Then she laughs, voice oozing contempt for all of us suckers who do have to get out of bed for less. Fortunately, she’ll be dead soon, and this quote will be the lone insignificant mark she will have left on the world. With time, this too will be forgotten, and then she’ll be what she hates most: a nobody. ‹-1› [WFMU]

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16. Fergie - Untitled 💿💿

Snippets of what I assume to be existing Fergie songs get mashed together with weird sound textures. It’s a more interesting track than I expected from the author of Fergalicious, but it’s otherwise unremarkable. ‹2›

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17. Anohni Hegarty - God With No Tear ❌

(credited to her dead name.)

Unfortunately, I have a misophonic reaction to this person’s singing. Her group Anohni and the Johnsons was a fixture of an internet radio network I’ve listened to for years, and I’d need to change to another station whenever one of their songs came on. Singing voices with heavy vibrato tend to sound uncanny to me, and this is an example extreme enough to make my skin crawl. It’s a very interesting voice, so I see why people would like it, it’s just incompatible with my particular brain. Please listen and judge for yourself. ‹0› [Youtube]

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18. Ingrid Sischy & Sandra Brant - Excerpts From Andy Warhol’s Interview With Ginger Rogers ❌

Two people, who may have had some interesting things to say, talk about nothing for 52 seconds. ‹0›

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19. Andrei Jewell - Holiwater: Blind Man’s Bath 💿💿

This track is an audio montage from the streets of a city in maybe India? It has ethereal music, melodic chanting, traffic sounds and crowd noises. When I close my eyes it kind of transports me to an unfamiliar time and place, but I think the effect would be much stronger if it was an unedited field recording instead of a composite. ‹2›

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20. Doug Aitken - Sonic Table 💿💿💿💿

You know how on TV, auctioneers talk in a strange musical cadence where all their syllables jumble together like they’re Boomhauer from King of the Hill? I assume that’s an exaggeration and no auctioneer literally sounds like that—wouldn’t people need to be able to understand what they’re saying to know what happens in the auction?—but it’s strangely compelling. This track has two guys doing that back and forth as part of a public performance. I can hear room noise and the audience reacting to them with whispers and hushed giggles. In the final third of the track, a polyrhythmic percussion section starts up to accompany them. I really like how this sounds, it’s otherworldly. ‹4›

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21. Liza Minnelli - The Sound of Broadway 💿

A person in heels walks down a street. This is probably a sound collage, but the continuous footsteps give the impression of a single take. I hear birds, car horns, people chattering, tires screeching, someone yelling something about Broadway. When I close my eyes, it transports me to another time and place, but it’s too familiar. If I wanted to hear traffic noises, I could take my headphones off. ‹1›

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22. Yoko Ono - Beat Piece 💿💿💿

This is a recording of a person’s heartbeat, or maybe someone hitting two slightly different bass drums with lots of reverb. I’ve never heard a heartbeat through a stethoscope, so I don’t know how this compares. But authentic or not, it is oddly soothing. ‹3›

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23. Pet Shop Boys - Transfer 💿💿💿💿

This is a nice pop song with great funky synths and electroclash beats. Then the beats get more subdued, and I hear a lovely voice harmonizing with a warm string section. ‹4› [Youtube]

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24. Courtney Love - Sunset Marquis ❌

A theatrical pop song composed of solo voice and piano. I don’t find the music interesting, and the singing doesn’t sound good to me. ‹0› [Youtube (longer version)]

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25. Magnétophone - Much Less Than a Day ❌

A harsh synthesizer tone repeats the same four notes over and over. Buried under the noise, a dramatic voice drones on, monotonous and unintelligible. ‹0› [WFMU]

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26. Spank Rock - Disco Jet (String Quartet?) 💿💿

A string quartet repeats a phrase that sounds like, for lack of a better term, “smart people music” (disparaging—think 00s festival films and NPR.) Rapping and a beat come in after the intro. The rapping becomes jittery and warped with backwards segments, and the song ends with the string layer also reversed. The sound is somewhat interesting, but they played it too safe. I wish they fucked it up more. ‹2›

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27. TOWA TEI - One Minute of Love 💿💿💿

Daftpunky synth voices repeat a 2 note bar. It goes on slightly too long, but then light plinky-plonk tones join in and turn the track into a fun electro jam. ‹3›

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28. Dani Siciliano - Inearvision 💿💿💿💿

This is a cut-up glitchy remix of melodious pop/R&B vocals. It’s similar to the Fergie track but much more ear-catching and euphonious. ‹4›

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29. Chris Watson - Telegraph Cove at Night 💿💿

Water flows and bubbles. It’s a very clear and pleasant recording. Cars pass in the distance. A bird screeches and honks. More birds join in. The clamor of their voices almost sounds like young children squealing. Then I hear a mysterious low metallic creaking/clanking noise. If it didn’t have the screeching and squealing, it’d be a very soothing soundscape. ‹2›

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30. Vashti Bunyan - Homesick 1972 Gibson from Los Angeles 💿💿💿💿

Lovely and soft electric guitar music, gently amplified without much distortion. It creates a comforting tone that covers the listener like a warm fuzzy blanket. ‹4›

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31. Robert Wilson - Dinner at 8 💿💿💿💿

Someone plays what sounds like a plucked string instrument from antiquity, maybe a lute or a lyre? It’s a stirring melody, but recorded from a distance in a crowded restaurant. I can barely hear the music over the self-important clamor. A man yawns at a rudely loud volume and says “What are we doing? It makes me nervous.” This piece moved me. I've experienced being the only one in the room who wanted to actually listen to the music; I feel like the artist was trying to express the same sadness. It made me feel pity for the human condition. There’s beauty all around us in unexpected places; if only we were willing to slow our lives down long enough to notice. ‹4›

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32. Christian Marclay - A Minute of Your Time 💿💿💿

Some real interesting noises in this one. Alien-sounding synths play a short chirpy melody. Electric pops and crackles appear, then a rapidly oscillating scratchy warble. An ominous low rumbling grows in strength as all other sounds disintegrate. ‹3›

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33. Miranda July - Thea 🍌🍌

This is a skit about family which plays with our conceptions of parenthood and identity. It made me chuckle, but I don’t think I can rate comedy on the same scale as the other tracks. Music tends to get better on repeated listens. I can pick out more details and find more to like. Unless I hate a song, I have to listen to it a lot before I get sick of it. Comedy is about being surprised, so a skit gets more tedious with every repeat listen. I always remove skits from album playlists because I don’t want the music to be interrupted by a joke I already know the punchline to. As comedy, this gets two bananas out of four, but there’s no way to turn bananas into CDs. Believe me, I’ve tried. ‹0›

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34. Patton Oswalt - Laughtrack ❌

65 seconds of obnoxious, fake, whooping and hollering canned laughter. Putting this directly after a very dry comedy skit makes it feel like a sarcastic dig. Were they trying to start beef between Oswalt and July? We’ll never know, but whatever the case, I can’t think of a circumstance in which I’d ever want to listen to this. ‹0›

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35. Littl’ans - We Look Good Together ❌

This sounds like a scene in a movie where a man talks to himself while primping in front of a mirror. He hums tunelessly, talks about how good he looks, and says a bunch of romantic cliches to an absent person. When I searched for this track, I learned there's a song by this artist with the same title, and it's actually a pretty cool garage rock cut. They should've put that on the album. ‹0›

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36. Lou Doillon - The Girl is Gone 💿💿💿💿💎

This is an ass-kicking rock song with smooth, confident and euphonious vocals. Sounds like one of Sonic Youth's more accessible tracks and the vocals remind me of Louise Post. I wish it was much longer than one minute, and I’ll definitely be looking this artist up. ‹5›

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37. Catherine Chalmers - Fly and the Man 💿💿💿💿

This is a story told entirely through environmental sound. A man walks across a room, pours liquid into a glass, and stirs something into it. He scoots a vinyl-upholstered chair on a wooden floor and sits down, sipping his drink. A fly starts buzzing around him. The man picks up a newspaper and starts to read. The fly buzzes. The man turns the page, taking another sip, then rolls the paper up and scoots the chair back out. He swats at the fly with the newspaper and misses. He swats again and misses again. He swats a third and a fourth time, his attempts and his footsteps becoming increasingly frantic. He swats one more time, and some large and intricate object falls and smashes into pieces on the floor. There's a beat of silence, and then the fly buzzes away, unharmed. Maybe it's not the deepest story ever told, but the execution is powerful and evocative. It sounds more real than real life. ‹4›

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38. The Fiery Furnaces - Penelope 💿

This sounds like a parody of “hippie fantasy music” from the 1960s and 70s, like Puff the Magic Dragon or some of the songs from the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit film. The vocals are melodramatic and the guitar consists of weird warbly chords and shrill plucks. It’s interesting, but it sounds like two different versions of the same song being played out of sync and becomes an unpleasant cacophonous mess. ‹1› [WFMU]

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39. Trevor Jackson - Playgroup “Boombox” (Demo Sketch) 💿💿

A collection of drums and pitched percussion instruments plays a complex rhythm. Vocal samples repeat “don’t stop” and “come on now” while zappy electronic bass adds some gut-rumbling texture. It sounds okay, but doesn’t amount to much. ‹2›

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40. Vito Acconci - Monument to the Dead Children, 1978 💿💿

This is a recording of a man saying “Warning: not one more” in a measured but firm voice. The recording is then looped and relooped on top of itself repeatedly at different intervals. As the syllables from iterations clash, the “w” sound merges with the “m” and the message seems to become “not one war/not one more war”. The overlapping waveforms create gnarly constructive interference that crescendos into a demonic wall of sound. It reminds me of experimental tape loop art that I like, such as I am sitting in a room and It’s gonna rain; here, I think the effect is blunted by the short length of the transformation and the eye-rolling lack of subtlety in the title and concept. I feel like people who make art with toothless and uncontroversial pro-social messages are cynical actors trading the performance of goodness for clout. Did this guy actually sacrifice anything to try to make sure there’s not one more dead child? What does his warning accomplish other than soliciting attaboys and pats on the back for saying “bad thing is bad”? Make art that speaks to the ugliness in the world, but if you have something to say, say it; if you don’t, then don’t just gesture vaguely to make it look like you care. I’d call it masturbatory, but I’ve looked up this guy’s other work and he’d probably be just fine with that description. ‹2›

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41. Dntel - College 💿💿💿

This is a spacey and tense electronic track that layers a bunch of cool distorted synth sounds and creates a mysterious alien-sounding melody. ‹3›

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42. Hayes Peebles - Lamentations 💿💿💿💿

Bendy guitars and drawn-out vocals create warm and dreamy folk-rock tones. There’s a spoken word piece that sounds like it comes from an old worn-out tape. I don’t know what it says, but it’s a sound I love. Reminds me of A Lovely Pear. ‹4›

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43. Maggie Cheung - Morning 💿💿💿💿

Slow, gentle, dreamy guitar accompanies soft melodic vocalizations. Follows very well from the previous track. ‹4›

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44. Cassetteboy - Inferno 1816 (Go on the blue dog) 💿💿💿💿

This is clips of a news interview with a very serious lady, cut up and rearranged into a funny and surreal parody of serious news interviews. I don't know the voice and I couldn’t guess the subject of the original piece, but I get the impression the interviewee is someone unlikable from whom the artist is, as his countrymen might describe, “taking the piss”. It’s layered over a jazzy swing tune to give it some proper musical structure. ‹4› [WFMU]

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45. Steve Boeddeker & Randy Thom - Score for a Brief Bad Dream 💿

The title of this piece is apt. They created a sound collage of haunting and unsettling noises, and it’s blunt but effective. For unsettling audio, I prefer the subtlety of the Stickney and Sakamoto pieces from earlier. This feels too contrived, and also has no musical qualities to speak of. I wouldn’t want it in my regular rotation. ‹1›

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46. Joan Jonas - Song 1973/2007 💿💿

A record with a lot of surface noise plays back a recording of a woman vocalizing a little ditty. She’s interrupted by a couple loud foghorn-like blasts, then the ditty resumes. At second 45 of 62, the record cuts to metallic clanking noises, maybe of a magazine being inserted into and removed from a rifle. Then there’s some indistinct shouting. Ambient, creepy, maybe a little too contrived, but effective at making me feel uneasy. Like track 45, it's not something I’d want to listen to a lot. ‹2›

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47. Fantastic Plastic Machine - Sex 💿💿💿

Glitchy, poppy electro piece where various individual and groups of voices cut in to inform the listener that “SEX.” Maybe it isn’t the most unique sentiment in the pantheon of pop music, but it’s a fun little bop. ‹3›

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48. UNKLE - Tired of Sleeping (edit) 💿💿💿💿💎

Like (I assume) many children of the 90s with weird taste in music, I’m fond of the UNKLE track Rabbit In Your Headlights (ft. Thom Yorke); that’s the only experience I have with the group, and I think this track is even better. It’s a tense, cinematic post-rock piece that builds to a big crescendo that makes me feel like, good or bad, some serious shit is about to go down. It doesn’t drag in the middle the way RiYH kind of does, even in the full version, which you can listen to on Youtube. It has a much slower build-up than this 1m09s edit, and it's also quite good. I think I should listen to some more UNKLE. ‹5›

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49. Mai Ueda - I Wanna Buy Some Clothes ❌

To deflate any strong emotions left over from the UNKLE track, the next piece is an 18-second-long a capella ditty in which the artist states her desire to buy some clothes (more clothes for her.) She then informs the listener that clothes make her happy. To add some “sonic eccentricity”, the mix places the vocals almost entirely in the left ear, and the right is quiet except for intermittent glitchy pops that make the listener think the file is corrupt. I thought I might have a bad rip, but the glitches are also present in the Mp3 on the artist’s website, which you can go listen to if you really want to. ‹0›

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50. Sylvie Fleury - High Heels (detail) ❌

High heeled footsteps echo sharply as a person walks across a hard floor, probably granite or ceramic tile. Nearby, an aquarium or a jacuzzi bubbles away. Neither sound is particularly nice. We heard better footsteps in track 21 and better water sounds in track 29, so I don’t know why this piece is included. ‹0›

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51. Fischerspooner - Laertes Act IV, Scene vii 💿💿💿

This is a bittersweet indietronic ballad with heavily fuzzed tones and a dreamy atmosphere. The lyrics comprise lines 211-215 of the titular scene in Hamlet, in which Laertes speaks after learning that his sister Ophelia had drowned herself in the river:

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,
The woman will be out.

I wasn’t totally clear on this passage’s meaning, so I looked up an explanation and found this rewording in plain English:

But, it’s a normal reaction; it’s our nature to cry in sorrow. Let people think it’s shameful. After I’ve finished crying, I’ll be strong again.

I know whatever shallow critique I can offer of the misogyny in Shakespeare won’t blow anyone’s mind, but shallow critique is what I’ve got: I think the misogyny in this sentiment dulls the impact. I’m sure if I saw a proper performance, the vocal inflections and body language would soften the line and help Laertes’ sorrow come across; but for the song, I don’t know if “I’m going to man up and get the bitch out of me” is the line I’d choose to focus on. It’s possible they're going for an interpretation in which “the woman” refers to Ophelia, and they’re trying to re-center her tragic loss in the narrative; if so, this didn't come across for me. But on the whole, the song does make me feel something. Not the sorrow of the original scene, but something closer to wistfulness or melancholy. It’s not perfect, but it hits. ‹3› [Youtube]

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52. Hiroshi Fujiwara - Ravel Mix 💿💿💿

This starts with a deep, heavy, echoey bass groove that sounds very “earthy”, like psybient trance from the 90s. A piano melody comes in. It’s pretty, but it meanders. It would be fine if it was just ambient notes, but it sounds like it’s going somewhere, so I wish it did. I love psybient, though, so I still dig the groove. ‹3›

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53. Ceryth Wyn Evans & Ali Janka - Untitled 🥀

Two guys sit around making sharp wet mouth noises as they yelp and giggle at each other. ‹-1›

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54. José González - Train in Marfa 💿

A short dialogue:

There’s a train coming.

Oh that’s good, I like that.

Then someone strums a couple guitar chords for a minute as a train rumbles by in the distance. There’s not much to say about this one. ‹1›

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55. Matt Sheridan Smith, Elizabeth Linden, and Rirkrit Tiravanija - Please Do Not Turn Off The Radio If You Would Like To Live Well In The Next 15 Minutes⁵ (Excerpt) 💿💿💿

A man talks about radio in an “educational programming” voice, while radio noises and old-timey sci-fi SFX play in the background. There’s a hint of a weird and deeper story: he says radio experienced a renaissance and “became the primary medium of the brain-resisting underground” after “the big black Giza⁶ incident and the concomitant paucity of crude oil reserves”. I can only find a single reference to this work online, on one of the artist’s CVs (PDF link), which describes it as “an 11-hour serial radio drama” and says it was presented at Serpentine Gallery. This makes it sound like it was never actually broadcast, so unless the artists have a full recording and decide to release it, this is the lostest of lost media.⁷ Virtually no one has ever heard it, and it hasn’t made enough of a mark that anyone even wants to hear it. And you know what? I’m okay with that. It’s nice to learn about something that can’t be found. I don’t think it’s a healthy impulse to grieve for every piece of human creativity that can’t be identified, tracked down, tagged, catalogued and contextualized. I’m all for preservation of culturally important art, but art without context has a unique power to catalyze the imagination. We could all benefit from making and engaging with art just for the joy and the wonder, and not for monetization, posterity or clout.⁸ It’s nice to get a little glimpse into someone’s creative world and know I will never have the full picture. We must embrace the FOMO and accept it if we want our minds to be free. ‹3›

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56. Helmut Lang - Excerpts From The Long Island Diaries; 7 Ducks Telling Richard Prince A Dirty Joke In A Public Toilet 🍌🍌🍌🍌

This is the bash.org quote about a duck telling a joke. It happened to someone who got it on tape, unless this was created in editing; I’d have no way of knowing. I rolled my eyes when they invoked the old “quack quack quack” trope, I really thought we were past those kinds of ugly stereotypes by 2007; but when they described quack quack as “quack quack quack (quack) quack”, I nearly did a spit take. It's an incisive barb against the gender essentialism of our kyriarchical power structures that shocks the listener in terms of both raw absurdity and exposing a deep, uncomfortable truth about ourselves. 4 out of 4 bananas. ‹0›

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57. Dave Eggers - The Commercials of Norway 🍌🍌

The author reads a comedic short story about an American woman on a business trip in Oslo, who notices the commercials on a bar TV and has an internal monologue about them. It’s funny, but not ha-ha funny. Two bananas. ‹0›

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58. Sunn O))) - Ultra Orthodox Caveman 💿

This is a drone metal piece which sounds exactly like every other piece of music by Sunn O))), the one novel exception being that it ends after only 1m45s rather than going on for uncountable millennia. I recommend it for fans of Sunn O))) (sunndancers, as they're known) who need to leave soon to catch a train. ‹1›

Part 1 Conclusion

Oh my god, that was too many words. These tracks are one minute long. I thought most of the reviews would be a couple sentence fragments. But no, they had to go and make me think stuff, and have feelings, as though it was some kind of art.

Out of 232 points possible on disc 1, Visionaire 53 earned 120, giving a score of 52%; meaning that so far, this compilation is trending just slightly above average, much like Freaks of Nature. Will we see any wild swings on disc 2? No clue! I haven’t listened to any of it yet. When I do, you’ll be the first to know about it. 🦝