Australian composer Chris Cobilis has announced a new project in collaboration with poet Kenneth Goldsmith (UbuWeb) and Spektral Quartet. This Is You will be released October 28 via Room40. Through this new work, the composer sought to understand the social and historical meaning of the long-running television show Funniest Home Videos. His goal with this research and the ensuing set of compositions was to understand how and why contemporary culture is so infatuated with seeing itself on television. This upswing in our collective narcissism has led to an overabundance of user-generated content in the media.
This Is You contains transcribed dialogue from the show, voiceover, and sound effects cues. Cobilis describes the album as “a metaphysical feedback loop involving the lens, a broadcast system, biological ocu-larcentrism and the Sun.” The album was performed live in studio by the Spektral Quartet and Kenneth Goldsmith at Electrical Audio. It was engineered by Steve Albini.
Preview the track “Fire of Publicity” below, and pre-order the album here.
More about: Chris Cobilis, Kenneth Goldsmith, Spektral Quartet
