Universal Serial Bus 2012 - 2020

The Universal Serial Bus is an easy-listening trip to be heard but not listened to. The hours-long ambient sounds in the release are field recordings that are processed through X’s learnt listening patterns. Perceiving the surrounding spectrum in harmonics, X tunes the body as an interface to the recorded fields. At the nexus of noise and music, the USB is an extension to X’s long term project in the sonic banality of “useless music”, a counterproductive twist to muzak’s total design of background music.

“I would describe it as listening to great music in a room surrounded by very little music. When you feel it, USB sounded the best. From warped machine sounds, to the triumphant electromagnetic-samples, to the mysterious windy signal jam, USB gives me the sense of an ordinary person going about his life.”

“…a similar sound fingerprint for ‘households’, ‘streets and ‘birds’ had already been found, but offered no further details as to the sound sources. IKEA also included various USBs for their showrooms, including its kitchens, living rooms and other interior spaces. Some of the combinations of these natural-sounding sounds could be an alternative to listening to it in the room itself, especially in quiet environments”

“In this sense, it is something passive; its accompaniment by sound is intended to be a marginal piece of sound, a discreet vehicle that might be better understood as an editorial device than as a potential repository of music.”