Perhaps the truest screw heir is Paul Octavian Nasca, a Romanian programmer who wrote the software used to create recent viral hit ‘U Smile 800% Slower’ (2010) – a Justin Bieber track stretched to 800 percent of its original length while the pitch remains unchanged. A Florida-based electronic musician used Nasca’s algorithm to smear the three-minute single into a half-hour epic of shimmering, sensual ambience. Bieber-haters and his legions of fans were equally enthralled by the transformation, which made the Canadian teen star’s corn-syrup pop sound like Icelandic band Sigur Rós. In less than a month, it was heard by more than two million people, received the endorsement of Mr Bieber (he tweeted: ‘this version of u smile is incredible to just chill out and fall asleep to. feels epic’), and spawned copycat slowdowns. - Jace Clayton, Music: The slowed-down tempos of screw and its influence on contemporary bands
November 9, 2010
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
nice piece of writing over at Frieze Mag:
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"Nasca, who prefers Goa trance slowed down by 10–15%, points out that, ‘if you listen carefully, you can “feel” how the [original Bieber song] is “frozen in time”.’ Listening converges into feeling as time evaporates. Screw and drag provide corporeal experiences for people in close quarters. To sample a phrase from Charles Mingus, those slowdowns offer a look beneath the underdog. Jacked up on esoteric mathematics, Nasca’s extreme stretches quite literally force songs to become more than themselves, beatified as they creep towards the infinite."
Very nice, thanks for the information.
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