SPANISH TRAIN / ENGLISH TRAIN

Audio Recording (Tape 22)
June 1994

Spanish Train is the name of a song by pop singer Chris De Burgh, and on this tape Barry and myself constructed 45 minute parody of the music. We recited the lyrics of the song a number of times, each time taking a more experimental approach and by the end of tape, the ‘music’ was rendered almost unrecognizable. Some of the things we used in making this tape included the ‘automatic machine gun’, an Indian music tape, a record player and the De Burgh record itself. This ‘irritating’ parody, along with Superman (Tape 21) and Zulu for Medics, was a component in my multi-tape audio installation: Songs for Nella.
On side two of this tape I continued my experiments with reading from D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, while playing a sound effects record of English train sounds. The shunting of the train, again created a provocative soundtrack. My choice of text was random, as I flipped through pulling out phrases here and there. The entire effect of the recording is one of an irrational movie-soundtrack or audio-book.