Around the 2010s a fierce sonic assault began, made of sharp sounds, saturated samples and hyper-processed concrete sonorities: in short, a sound of digitalization overdose, social addiction and cyborg existence. From that sonic magma came genres, microgenres, constellations: hyperpop, vaporwave, deconstructed club (to name only a few of the best known). This noisy sonic mixture is like an enormous buffet of fragments, a table laid with a thousand dishes, from which everyone takes what they prefer. But there are those who are not content with tasting: those who want to throw everything back into a single cauldron.
In 2014 an article by Adam Harper appeared in The Fader, introducing a new term: Epic Collage. The article discussed the early works of Elysia Crampton (E+E), in particular the album The Light That You Gave Me to See You, but also Total Freedom and Diamond Black Hearted Boy. Three producers who seemed to use music as a sacred, distorted language driven by a maximalist use of samples, including pop fragments, violent sounds, epic textures, glitch and highly processed sounds. Synesthetic, cinematic works carry the listener into unknown realities. You close your eyes and you are not in a dramatic film or on a riverbank: you are rather in a state of confusion, where everything passes by you before you can even grasp it. The themes are fluid yet full of friction: political, social and deeply tied to contemporary anxiety. Epic Collage has its roots in pop culture, noise, ambient and sound collage, but does not fully identify with any of them.
“The framework is avant-garde sample collage, but their work tells stories about 21st-century experience.“ Adam Harper
Returning to the earlier analogy, Epic Collage is a sonic minestrone / epic collage in which, in my view, what matters is not just the dish itself, but above all the recipe and the taste. Even though there are albums that sublimate it to the point of becoming veritable manifestos, I see it mainly as a practice, an aesthetic, a way of thinking about sound.
In recent years the term Epic Collage has come back into play in underground music (and beyond), and combing through the tags on Bandcamp or RateYourMusic you realize that it has never really left us. Every year the releases labeled Epic Collage increase, and you have probably listened to some of them: Lexachast by Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas, or some works by Arca, Giant Claw or S280F. Even some related genres, such as post-internet, botanica or petalcore, are reread through this lens. And even if it may look like an enormous pot-pourri, and some works or subgenres are not entirely consistent with the practice of Epic Collage, it is evident that a new interest is consolidating around this aesthetic. Perhaps some albums have only recently been “tagged” this way, to follow a trend; or perhaps we are facing a real rediscovery.
Epic Collage does not seek approval. It exists in the instant when sound becomes experience. It is made of textures, plunderphonics, mash-ups, sound collage and maximalism, all filtered through sizzling digital processors. It can be a sudden caress or a gurgle of anxiety. A sonic cinema so saturated that you cannot even make out a single image. It is highly emotional music, inseparable from the political and social context. Its very existence is steeped in questions of gender, post-colonialism, digital culture and emotional distortions.
If you would like to explore this topic further, you can write to us directly at gooolem.mag@gmail.com. Thanks to your interest and any suggestions, a second episode of UMIDO, a short appendix or an interactive map dedicated to epic collage could come to life.
The Light That You Gave Me to See You – E+E
Gargoyle - DJWWWW + Nicole Brennan + OROKIN
“My Everything” By: love life all the time ---- HOSTED BY: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ - love life all the time
Hast Thou Brought Enough Fairies? Need More? OK! - Her Wonderworld Reversal Orchestra
XPETAL – 7038634357
amor de encava – Weed420
I love MUSIC – mifu
Siddhartha – precettö
28 – S280F
Jestem Will Smith (LATIN ELECTRONIC/EPIC COLLAGE/INDIGENOUS ANDEAN MUSIC/HYPNAGOGIC POP/DEMBOW MIX)
English translation of the Italian original. Read the original →