Listening to The Evolution Control Committee feels like stumbling into a pirate radio broadcast from a dimension where the 1950s and the 1990s collided at high speed. It is a dizzying, often hilarious sensory overload where Herb Alpert instrumentals provide the backbone for Public Enemy's fury, and news anchors are chopped into rhythmic, stuttering poets of the mundane. The sound is inherently tactile, filled with the crackle of old vinyl, the digital scream of abused hardware, and the uncanny valley of found audio.
What makes them truly distinctive is their commitment to 'culture jamming' as a high art form. They don't just mix songs; they deconstruct the very idea of intellectual property. Whether it's the infamous 'Rocked by Rape' or their 'CDestruction' live sets, there is a palpable sense of mischief and intellectual defiance. It is music that demands you question who owns a sound and why, all while keeping a steady, if broken, beat.
Begin your journey with 'Gunderphonic' or the 'Whipped Cream Mixes' to hear the foundational DNA of the modern mashup. If you want to see how far the rabbit hole goes, 'All Rights Reserved' offers a more polished but no less subversive take on their plunderphonic philosophy. It is essential listening for anyone who finds the concept of 'originality' a bit too tidy.
The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in Columbus in 1986. They create music that falls within the borders of the sound collage genre, typically using uncleared and illegal samples from various sources as a form of protest against copyright law. The ECC also produces numerous audio experiments that goes outside regular composition methods, including the disfiguring of compact discs in a live performance known as "CDestruction". They have produced a few video works as well, ranging from re-edited 50's corporate shorts to Teddy Ruxpin reciting the works of William S. Burroughs. Other activities include culture jamming. They are one of the pioneers of the mash-up or bootleg, where two or more songs are mixed together into a new track. According to Neil Strauss in The New York Times, "...many musical observers trace the official beginnings of the British bootleg scene to The Evolution Control Committee, which in 1993 mixed a Public Enemy a cappella with music by Herb Alpert." These are the now-classic "Public Enemy/Whipped Cream Mixes" containing Public Enemy's inflammatory raps titled "By the Time I Get To Arizona" and "Rebel Without a Pause" overdubbed onto instrumentals by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The ECC wrote "Rocked by Rape," consisting of samples of Dan Rather's deadpan delivery describing various atrocities over looped riffs from AC/DC's "Back in Black." This work brought legal threats against The ECC by CBS, but by 2003, CBS appeared to have dropped the issue. "Rocked by Rape" was nationally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered in 2000. It was even played at a roast for Rather, later broadcast on C-SPAN. Since 2000, Gunderson has performed his works on stage through an electronic instrument of his own invention: "The Thimbletron." It is made of a pair of gloves with ten thimbles attached at the ends of the fingers that are then wired to a laptop computer. As the thimbles are touched together, the laptop in turn plays a different sound sample. Gunderson claims that the device uses "thimbletronium energy" and warns that "thimbletronic radiation can leak unexpectedly due to a mishap during a live performance. The audience is advised to attend Thimbletron performances at their own risk." Gunderson has also modified a bread toaster in a similar fashion, with each depression of a lever playing a sample. The Thimbletron has been largely retired in public performances in favor of the Wheel of Mashup in which audience members come up on stage and spin a wheel to randomly select the music and vocals to be combined. These are then mashed together in real time using the VidiMasher 3000, a large rear-projected touch screen used to control Ableton Live. VidiMasher 3000 (Video Mashup Screen) Demo
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