Well, here's an interesting find: A strange mixtape supposedly put together by Kurt Cobain a year before Nirvana released their debut album has recently come to light. According to Dangerous Minds, Cobain composed Montage of Heck around 1988 using a 4-track cassette recorded. The mixtape is a sound collage, and travels to unexpected places using clips culled from obscure sources. Though the 36-minute-long track starts of pleasantly enough, it gets very weird very fast — there's a lengthy segment about three minutes in that's mostly a repeated retching sound.

Still, it's a worthwhile listen just to gain some insight as to how Cobain thought about sound, and to admire the then-21-year-old's impressive music catalog. Dangerous Minds points out that he must've had actual physical copies of everything he samples, as he didn't have access to any sort of streaming site in 1988. The reported full list of components used in the making of Montage of Heck is below, according to the blog United Mutations. 

Courtesy of United Mutilations, here’s a list of components that Kurt used in making “Montage of Heck.” It’s quite a list:
 

“The Men In My Little Girl’s Life” by Mike Douglas
“The Sounds of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel
“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” by The Beatles
“A Day In The Life” by The Beatles
“Eruption” by Van Halen
“Hot Pants” by James Brown
“Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” by Cher
“Go Away Little Girl” by Donny Osmond
“Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver
“Everybody Loves Somebody” by Dean Martin
“The Candy Man” by Sammy Davis, Jr.
“In A Gadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly
“Wild Thing” by William Shatner
“Taxman” by The Beatles
“I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family
“Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?” by The Barbarians
“Queen Of The Reich” by Queensryche
“Last Caress/Green Hell” covered by Metallica
“Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin
“Get Down, Make Love” by Queen
“ABC” by The Jackson Five
“I Want Your Sex” by George Michael
“Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden
“Eye Of The Chicken” by Butthole Surfers
“Dance of the Cobra” by Butthole Surfers
“The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave” by Butthole Surfers
“New Age” by The Velvet Underground
“Love Buzz” by Shocking Blue
Orchestral music from 200 Motels by Frank Zappa
“Help I’m A Rock” / “It Can’t Happen Here” by Frank Zappa
“Call Any Vegetable” by Frank Zappa
“The Day We Fall In Love” by The Monkees
“Sweet Leaf” by Black Sabbath (intro)
Theme from The Andy Griffith Show
Mike Love (of The Beach Boys) talking about “Transcendental Meditation”
Excerpts of Jimi Hendrix speaking at the Monterey Pop Festival
Excerpts of Paul Stanley from KISS’ Alive!
Excerpts of Daniel Johnston screaming about Satan
Excerpts from sound effects records
Various children’s records (Curious George, Sesame Street, The Flintstones, Star Wars).

MONTAGE OF HECK (mixtape) by Kurt Cobain

recordings made circa 1995-1998 at 350 bowery in nyc featuring daniel raffel, adrien capozzi and doron gura

waves

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First free running patch with rings.
Rings is the only sound source on this patch.
But there are two asynchrones sources of CV and trig wich modulate it.

Rings1

ARP sequence featuring the glorious Cwejman MMF-1s filter in 12db/oct mode.

A Yarns is in ARP mode and feeding pitch to a Cwejman VCO-2RM. This is routed into a Cwejman MMF-1s in 12dB/oct low pass mode. I play the chords live via MIDI keyboard. 
The MMF-1s is modulated by the ADSR-VC2 (CV1) and gets subtle modulation on CV2 and Q-peak via a D-LFO in random mode.
The attacks of the ADSR-VC2 are also modulated a bit via the Modcan Quad LFO. 
The MMF-1s is set to subtle saturation and 2nd harm distortion.
Last part of the signal route: VCA-MX4 -> MX-4S -> AI-2 -> Prism AD -> Protools. Bit of Adaptiverb and EchoBoy added. 

Loving the MMF-1s in this mode, so warm and nostalgic sounding!

Nostalgic ARP

Party Talk (Silent Guests)

Revisited an old track that I was never happy with the mix of. Sounds better now. I wish I remembered what exotica album I sampled!
You can hear the original version here: https://archive.org/details/TheoFishHoleSpawnSore/

Beyond the Rainbow (2017 VIP)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - "I Will Make Room For You (Four Tet Remix)"

Here’s a patch with at it’s heart the Cwejman MBC-3, it is used for compression, colouring and sound design. 

There are two layers:

1. The rhythmical source is a RG-6 clocking a PH-8. The 0 and 270 degrees Saw/Square outputs of the PH-8 are routed to two FSH-1’s. The outputs of the FSH-1’s are routed to a MX-4S which is panned by a PH-4. The RG-6 modulates the two FSH-1’s via the CV1 inputs, and also modulates the PWM input and FM1 input of the PH-8. 

2. The gate output of the RG-6 triggers a CTG-VC, which pings a MMF-1S. This creates the percussive layer and bell-type sounds. The VCA/Mix output of the MMF-1S is routed to the MBC-3. Two of its compressor bands are routed to the audio inputs (no2) of the FSH-1s and are mixed with layer 1. The third (upper) band of the MBC-3 is used to FM the PH-8 via FM input2. The RG-6 also triggers a Turing Machine that is locked into loops. The Seq output of the Turing Machine modulates the frequency of both the MMF-1 and PH-8. This creates the repeating motives.

I wiggle the two frequency knobs of the FSH-1s and the frequency knob of the PH-8. The PH-8 is used in audio rate as well as LFO mode. The latter creates the clicky percussion sounds. 

Recorded in one long take into ProTools via a RND 5059 and Prism AD. Then cut up to make it slightly less boring. Bit of reverb and limiting added on the master fader.

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danielraffel