Arturas Bumšteinas

Arturas Bumšteinas is a sound artist operating within the spheres of performative sound art, radio art, installations, experimental acoustic and electronic music. His extensive list of collaborators contains such names as Vladimir Tarasov and Žilvinas Kempinas. One of his recent endeavours is “Bad Weather”, an artificial weather show presented in Unsound festival in Krakow in 2017. It is a performative sound-art event with performers engaging with reconstructions of Baroque theater noise machines. They create a strange, constantly morphing effect. Arturas’ own music balances between the found-objects sound processing, noisier soundscapes and organic improvisatory sensibilities. He is practicing his own musical conceptualism where he is trying out different compositional methods.

STM 291 is a pleasantly disorienting experience of more than 100 songs morphed into a collage-like ear movie and usually difficult to recognize. The experience recalls listening to a sophisticated radio station on acid. Or background muzak intensified to an almost psychedelic effect. The overall mood of the mix ranges from cinematic and trippy easy listening to more chaotic, when it seems that tracks almost fall on top of each other. In a way this piece reminds culture jamming techniques of Negativland or plunderphonic mash-ups by John Oswald. Embark on this sonic quest and see whether you can recognize some of its sources.

Related works

Arturas Bumšteinas on the mix

“Stimulus Collapse – a collection of more than 100 different songs sent by Arturas’ friends and woven into an anti-stimulus-progressing collage. Stimulus Progression is a concept, in the 50s implemented by the U.S. Muzak corporation to maintain the pace and mood of background music in order to control the general affect states and maintain productivity of its aural victims.

This mix by Arturas Bumšteinas is both a Shazam challenge and an experimental karaoke exercise: the listener is invited to sing along with this mix of instrumental sounds.”