broken music

1. composition n.1 18:58 2. composition n.2 3.25 3. composition n.3 4:23 4. composition n.4 10:17 5. composition n.5 13:54 total time 51:15 "from 1963 to 1964 i used to play records either too slowly or too fast and thus change the quality of the music. in 1965 i started to destroy records: scratch them, punch holes in them, break them. by playing them (which destroyed the needle and often the record player, too) an entirely new music was created -- unexpected, nerve-racking, and aggressive. compositions lasted a second or for an infinitely long time (like when the needle got stuck in a deep groove and played the same phrase over and over again). soon i developed this system even further. i began sticking tape on top of records, painting over them, burning them, cutting them up and gluing parts of different records back together again to achieve the widest possible variety of sounds. later i began to work in the same way with scores. i erased some of the notes, signatures, and whole bars. i added notes and signatures, changed the tempo and order of the bars, played the compositions backwards, turned the lines upside down, pasted different parts of different scores together, and so on." -- milan knizak.