Artifact 5.2: The Tragically Hip’s In Between Forgetting and Coldplay’s XYZ (December 2004, June 2005)

As opposed to the previous artifact (5.1: the 2005 demo track "Fan of Yours", see link below), the remixes discussed here have actually materialized through the reconfiguration of two popular albums, specifically, The Tragically Hip’s In Between Evolution(2004) and Coldplay’s X&Y (2005).The individual song objects from these albums are supplemented with “b-sides” that were omitted from the officially released album. These were made available and purchased from via digital download in order to create a pool of artifacts for remixing purposes. The intent of this example is to demonstrate how individual songs can be considered as building blocks (primary artifacts) for user-driven remixes (secondary artifacts), not only as source material for sampling, but also as whole pieces to be rearranged in a new version of the album. In these cases, the remixes were created by sampling portions of the album’s songs and creating loops that help to bridge the songs from one song to the next. The objective is then to create a sequence of songs witha “flow” that improves the listening experience of the albums. The example also attempts to show the issues presented by technological, cultural, and marketing restrictions on the ability of users to engage with their culture in ways that extend upon the idea of creating a playlist, i.e. remixing the songs together rather than just reordering them.

- From J. Flynn, Travels in Intertextuality, 2006, p. 285
https://www.academia.edu/1320506/Travels_in_Intertextuality_the_autopoetic_identity_of_remix_culture

"Fan of Yours", recorded and performed by R. Pollock and J. Flynn, June 1st, 2005 in Burnaby BC: 
https://soundcloud.com/podstream/fan-of-yours-original-from-the

The Tragically Hip - In Between Evolution: Slight Return 2005 (a marginal remix)

OLD ADVENTURES IN LO-FI... 

Next to a small little cobblestone street on the edge of Vancouver's Gastown used to be a bunch of rehearsal spaces for local bands, with all the aesthetics, trappings, and varmints of a set from David Fincher's Fight Club. Matt Wilson, the ex-bassist from from late 90s Campbell River rock band halcyon days had a shared room here with his other band and in late 2008 suggested to former bandmates Joel Flynn (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Derek Lee (drums) to come on by and make use of the space. After the sudden passing of Flynn's father in December of that year, the ex-Riverite singer needed some music to work through the situation. He recruited two other ex-Riverites, his nephew Luke Schuss on guitar and Erin Lahay on piano/keyboards. 

To honour the infamous old singing fisherman - Flynn's father Doug, who had moved on to Fiddler's Green - the five-piece put together a bunch of mostly Irish-themed songs to play at a St. Patrick's Day memorial at the Media Club. The nameless group continued to get together and learn songs, some new originals and holdovers from the halcyon days era, but mostly just a bunch of cover songs that were fun to play. Borrowing Flynn's nom-de-plume of that he used for his digital media art experiments, the band played one other show at the Media Club in July of 2009, but never did anything else outside the walls and microphones of, ahem, "Cobblestone Road Studios". 

Of course, "studios" is saying a bit much, as it is basically a 15'x15' room with some randomly placed microphones. These consisted of either a Rode Podcaster or an iPod nano with a Belkin stereo mic attachment, which were later thrown together into multitrack Garageband projects. Yet this bare minimal approach did the lo-fi job and the Campbell River collective continued to play away in the space until it was closed down in early 2010. Some informal recording took place during this time, but was more note-taking and reference material for the band members than anything else. 

Later in the year, while backing up all these recordings to a new hard drive, Flynn ended up losing most of them when the brand new drive crashed within a  week (damn you LaCie!). File recovery software couldn't identify the Garageband files, and the old "throw the drive in the freezer" last resort couldn't get the drive spinning. The still nameless band never ended up finding another full rehearsal space, or play another show as a full band, while the lost Garageband recordings are still sitting unrecoverable on the busted LaCie (with the eye-catching design by Porsche). 

FAST FORWARD: While rummaging through discs, drives, and other piled up office stuff in early 2011, Flynn came across an old recovery disc from the busted LaCie drive. On it were some raw and rough mp3s taken during the group's rehearsals in 2009 that he gave a listen. With Erin now on a two-year 'round the world adventure, and the rest of the band still in limbo with other projects and a lack of a regular rehearsal space, Flynn decided to collect and coordinate some of these lo-fi recordings through a SoundCloud page, which has now been repurposed for Podstream Studio's uses.

The Tragically Hip - In Between Evolution: Slight Return 2005 (a marginal remix)

Podstream Studios