murmurations

I've been thinking for a while now about what it is that I find so appealing, as a listener and composer, about techniques of sampling in music. Considering that sampling can be defined quite broadly – simply as the recording and then editing of sounds from one piece of music for use in one's own piece of music – it's interesting that the things listeners tend to identify as 'samples' (at least within experimental electronic music) often share quite similar aesthetic properties and cultural associations. The act of sampling does not in itself necessitate these particular associations and understandings. In contemporary EEM, the typical aesthetic characteristic of the sample is the audibility of its constitution as a sample. The very fact that the sound has been taken from another musical piece is something the musician-as-sampler often either tries to communicate or does not cover up. This can be communicated within the track in a variety of ways. The sampled elem...