Pegritzmuzik

Assorted Works

Derek C. F. Pegritz — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:35:25 +0000

Assorted Works is an evergrowing, evermutating collection of random tracks: orphans of abandoned projects, extemporaneous experiments in various styles, samples of works to come – all manner if disparate music ranging from lugubrious ambient dirges to terrifying medical soundscapes to beautiful belly-dance jams! Check this page frequently for updates, as I’m adding new stuff to it all the time.

Click or Right-Click files to download/play samples.

Fuck You, Melissa (7.01)
Written/recorded: October 2008. Things almost always end abruptly – and badly – in my world. I’ve learned to never get comfortable with anyone and, more importantly, never, never develop emotional ties – because the second I do, the rug is pulled out from under my feet…and over the past seven years I’ve spent too much of my time picking my bruised and stiff body up off of the floor. “Fuck You, Melissa,” in fact, is more like a “fuck you” to all the fickle twats who’ve swept my feet out from under me…and an admonishment to myself to refrain from trusting anyone enough to let them hold my carpet.

The Radiologist’s Nightmare (7.15)
Written/recorded: Summer 2007. In 2007, I was hospitalized for the second time with ileus – a stoppage of peristalsis in my small intestine that left me bedridden with tubes down my throat, pumping festering shit up from my paralyzed bowels through my nose. I was very hopped up on morphine during this hospital stay, and had some interesting opiate dreams. After I was released, I began composing a series of eerie pieces of “hospital ambience” to explore my personal iconography of hospitals as earthly purgatories of pain and misery. The EP these pieces would’ve comprised was to be called Hospitaleyes, but only two tracks were ever completed: this one, and the one below. Anyway, I think this may be the creepiest track I’ve EVER written.

Discharge (3.43)
Written/recorded: Summer 2007. This is the other track that would’ve been part of Hospitaleyes had I simply not lost all interest in the project. It’s still pretty damn creepy, though! Do not listen to it late at night unless you seriously want the jimjams.

goodbye, kirsten (8.03)
Written/recorded: Sometime in late 2005. Kirsten is a good friend of mine. Once, though…well, things were confusing and strange. This track came out of that confusion.

A Dying Star (High Def V) (10.54)
Written/recorded: December 2006.I loved the movie The Fountain, and was quite excited when I discovered that there was a contest to remix the film’s main theme (by Clint Mansell, one of my favourite soundtrack composers). I downloaded all the samples and set about using those spare parts to create “A Dying Star,” my tribute to Xibalba, the exhausted, senescent star in the film. The remix, when finished, was nearly 11 minutes long…aaaaaaand guess what? In order to upload it (the site had a ridiculous file size limit of something like 10 megabytes), I had to save it as a 64kbps mp3. Which sounded like shit. No wonder visitors to the site gave it 1 star. Well…here’s how it should<.em> have sounded. You may wish to consider dosing yourself with LSD or dextromethorphan before listening, though, as this is – according to several acidhead friends of mine – the spaciest piece of music I’ve ever written.

MORE MATERIAL COMING SOON!

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THX 1138: Incidental Sound Architectures

Derek C. F. Pegritz — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:35:02 +0000

OK, enough of the depressing shit. On to something completely different!

George Lucas’ THX 1138 is one of the finest science-fiction films ever made – far, far better than childish tripe like Star Wars. Though the subject matter of the film is certainly not all that original, Lucas manages to capture the paranoia, the strangeness, and the alienation of THX’s regimented, preprogrammed future brilliantly by creating a film that, though it does have a recognizable plot, is more like a cross between surrealist experimental film and a dislocated documentary. Its dystopian vision is matched only by other masterpieces like Blade Runner and A Boy and His Dog.

THX 1138: Incidental Sound Architectures is not intended to be a new soundtrack to the film, nor is it built from samples of the brilliant audio architecture found in the film itself. Rather, it is a collection of pieces inspired by the various elements – visual, auditory, narrative – that comprise the film itself. It is, in essence, a set of sonic sculptures that comprise a reprocessing of the film via the wetware installed in my skull. Heavy rhythms, sliced’n'diced beat salads, and all manner of weird, mechanical atmospherics combine to shave you bald and give you a tray full of socially-prescribed sedatives. It’s lifestyle music for human drones.

Sounds like: Otto von Schirach, Phil Western, Download, Haujobb, Architect, lots of bald, androgynous human drones milling about in vast underground facilities monitored by robotic police.

(Click track titles to download/play samples.)
01 Init (3:05)
02 Properly Sedated (6:24)
03 By The Masses For The Masses (4:56)
04 Thermal Transfer (Dance Mix) (4:06)
05 The Theatre of Noise (3:47)
06 Holograman (4:24)
07 Department of Biological Flow (5:07)
08 Contortion Control (4:25)
09 White Room (4:43)
10 Shell Dweller (John Carpenterish Version) (4:52)
11 Car Chase (5:08)
12 Emerge (End Credits) (2:20)

Download entire album:
256kbps mp3 or Lossless FLAC with printable cover art.

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Subterranean Passage 3: Please Notify Next of Kin

Derek C. F. Pegritz — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:33:45 +0000

Third and final volume of the “Subterranean Passage” trilogy. There comes a point in everyone’s life when you just have to realize that the life you dreamed of living when you were younger and full of hope will never come to be – that the act of dreaming of something better is a foolish waste of time. At that point, you realize that the best years of your life are dead but you…you’re still alive. Like some kind of zombie. (Only you don’t get to do cool things like eat brains and hang out at the Mall all day.) It’s easy to deny a realization like that, and you periodically need to be reminded that you are, in fact, nothing more than the inheritor of that earlier you’s manifold failures. But after months of torturing yourself with endless “what-ifs” and desperately trying to recapture even the faintest spark of vanished glory, simply shrugging and saying, “That’s it, I’m done” can be an incredibly liberating experience. Much more liberating, in fact, than putting a bullet in your head or anyone else’s.

Sounds like: Coil, Brian Lustmord, Wilt, giving up.

(Click track title to download/play samples.)
1. broken anchorchain (9.07)
2. consider (4.06)
3. for the first time in six months (5.12)
4. neither forgive nor forget (12.07)
5. present day (8.56)
6. tedium (8.50)
7. shut the door (2.53)

Download entire album (256kbps MP3s with printable cover art)

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Subterranean Passage 2: A special place prepared for you in hell

Derek C. F. Pegritz — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:33:02 +0000

Second volume of the “Subterranean Passage” trilogy: one single tense, gritty track full of droning drear, nervous seething, an anhedonic Arabic guitar solo, and an troubling atmosphere of barely-contained bloodlust. At the time I wrote this, all I wanted to do was die so that I could be waiting for “her” in hell when her own day finally, inevitably came. She would be delivered across the Styx to find me waiting with a pair of flaming hot tongs and a scalpel. The torments I had planned for “her” would be such as would make the sickest visions of Dante, Clive Barker, and Edward Lee shrivel in comparison. Some of the thoughts that crossed my mind at this time truly frightened me, but only something truly savage could have distracted me from the obsessive threat of self-slaughter. No, really. Hence the reason that I have only managed to listen to this whole EP all the way through twice, and I wrote the fucker. Good luck.

Sounds like: Coil, Brian Lustmord, Wilt, Skinny Puppy’s Puppy Gristle playing at on broken speakers in a filthy operating room somewhere in the slums of Dis.

(Click track title to download/play sample.)
1. A special place prepared for you in hell (42.48)

Download entire album (256kbps MP3s with printable cover art)

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Subterranean Passage 1: Not much longer now….

Derek C. F. Pegritz — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:32:22 +0000

In 2003, the only real “relationship” I’ve ever been in collapsed. And I mean collapsed: it came down harder than the World Trade Center on 9/11. As if the permanent damage done to my own mental and emotional well-being wasn’t enough, the collateral damage was, in many ways, worse. Friendships vanished as people took sides, accusations and slurs were rampant, and real honest-to-god violence only narrowly averted. I’ve never been closer to suicide – or homicide – in my entire life. From that whole soul-scarring experience came the “Subterranean Passage” trilogy of EPs: a documentary, in ambient audio sculpture, of my own Dantean journey through hell, which is a terrifyingly real place that makes the most flammable fantasies of the religious look as cozy as a weekend in San Tropez. See, the worst thing about hell is that it exists inside your own skull. It’s a Klein bottle of misery: it contains you, but you, in turn, contain it…and the only way to escape it is to blow a hole in your head wide enough to let what’s left of you leak out.

[Wanna hear something funny about the three Subterranean Passage EPs? I don't have a clue how I made these tracks. I vaguely remember using Sony SoundForge and Acid 4.0...plus some reverb, distortion, and delay plugins. But other than that, I can't tell you how they were created or from what sound sources. All of the original files are gone: they disappeared sometime back in 2005, I think. I only have these mysterious artifacts left over now.]

Sounds like: Coil, Brian Lustmord, Wilt, the shivering sigh of an old prisoner’s last, exhausted breath.

(Click track titles to download/play samples.)

1. told (3.28)
2. found (9.27)
3. hatred (6.04)
4. loss (3.27)
6. days (21.27)
7. dose (5.10)

Download entire album (256kbps MP3s with printable cover art)

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.