Phinney/McGee: Fester

After a hiatus of four years Phinney/McGee returned with this mail collaboration recorded in early 1996. It's an unusual work for Phinney/McGee: in essence a 60 minute tape collage of fragments from daily life, lo tech electronics, keyboards and samples. The fragments repeat over and over throughout the course of the work in varying patterns. Fester is a self-referential work that continually folds back in on itself. There are tape snippets of Phinney describing his home environment plus various sounds including his daughter's sing-songs, cats meowing and dogs barking. There are tapes of McGee talking to Phinney on the telephone with Phinney/McGee's Coincidence tape playing in the background, as well as answering machine messages to McGee from Phinney. McGee also contributes manipulated tapes recordings of a smoke detector in his apartment, synthesizer drones and other minimal electronics. Phinney also contributes keyboard jam fragments with Mike Honeycutt, as well as samples from records, and other electronics. Fester takes sounds from the mundane and everyday and re-contextualizes them into a meta-form that transcends geographical and temporal limitations. Conceptual as hell and difficult -- but who wants an easy listening experience any way?