Well I Don’t Seem To Be Getting On Very Fast

WARNING! This new release can cause serious aural anxiety!

Friday 29th September is release day for another experimental, avant-garde recording under one of the moniker that I reserve for bizarre tracks – Derren Vergoen.

If you enjoy this strange recording, please save or share it!

Here’s the background story…. Many years ago I was living in Sydney, Australia, and I felt that I was a long, long way from home. This was in the 1990s – without the benefit of the internet and video calls. So I used to record cassettes and send them home to my mum and dad. And my mum and dad used to send a cassette back to me. I am very lucky to still have a lot of these recordings!

My mum, Isabel, often talked about how she didn’t have time to get everything done… her phrase was “Well I Don’t Seem To Be Getting On Very Fast”.

On this recording I’ve taken two loops of mum saying this phrase. One loop is slightly shorter than the other. I’ve then repeated both loops in parallel so the track starts with mum saying “Well I Don’t Seem To Be Getting On Very Fast”.

The two loops get further and further out of phase – creating a track that becomes increasingly difficult to listen to! The rhythm becomes disturbing and conflicting. Eventually the track ends with the two loops getting back in phase together.

Derren says:

“I am fascinated by snippets of conversations that you overhear. And in particular the way that you can’t always make out what someone says – when other conversations are taking place simultaneously. In this piece, I wanted to explore that idea, but decided to change the conflicting conversations to the same conversation…. and in this case to explore that idea further by using the same phrase!”