Know Ze Frank?

If you don’t know who he is then don’t miss his 2012 set of talking-head community experiment episodes which may (or may not) re-cement his status as the Original Youtube Superstar. (He was the Internet video-blogging superstar before there was any Youtube.)

Ze is known for grand-scale community projects and pranks (like turning the Earth into a sandwich.) One of his more recent projects was to encourage electronic musicians to make new music using a Pain Pack of samples using sounds generated exclusively from voicemails left by “anyone experiencing emotional pain“.

I love this project.

I love that Ze Frank has encouraged people to share actual moments of suffering so that a larger community can transform them into music. Thanks Ze! Thanks brave voicemail-leavers. Thanks remixers. Thanks to you out there, too.

Here’s a rundown of the project in Ze Frank’s own words:

PAIN PACK – Tear it apart and put it back together

I posted a phone number and asked that anyone experiencing emotional pain leave a message describing their pain.

(646) 495-9271 x 18463

I received a total of 53 messages over the next two days. 22 messages were left by men and 31 were left by women.

Six people gave me permission to post their messages publicly so that you could listen.

I sent those 53 voice messages to musicians and DJ’s along with the following request:

“Please make sounds from these recordings by cutting, compressing, stretching, distorting… any sort of manipulation at all. The resulting sounds can be percussive, ambient, tonal – anything – as long as they are derived from these voicemails and are note recognizable in any significant way.”

I received 138 samples.

The 138 samples, known as the pain pack, were made available for download.

I invited musicians and DJs (and I also invite you) to use these samples to create songs.

If you use the pain pack, please send me a copy of what you create :: ze[at]zefrank.com

Special thanks to everyone who submitted voice messages, created samples (especially Chris V) and to everyone who has submitted songs.

Thank you, Ze.

Thus begins this fairly hillarious set of five tracks from an oldskool (elementary school?) music education record. Ten years ago, I used one of these samples to launch an epic drum ‘n’ bass DJ set up on top of a mesa in northern New Mexico. Hope you find some good use for these too.

These weird quotes come from an even weirder story on NPR about robotic seals.