A friend pointed me to an interesting cut and paste work today from Wax Audio. Wax Audio released an entertaining EP of songs in March 2005 that you can download from their site for free. Wax Audio’s Mediacracy is likely not “illegal” per se, but I’d be surprised if some people didn’t attempt to sue, regardless. Sampling from movie trailers, popular music, Fox News, American soldiers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush, and television interviews from a variety of sources. Words are re-combined to entertaining effect, such as on track #7 where George W. Bush tells us a story about a world where there’s no Heaven to the tune of Imagine by John Lennon.

Illegal or not, I’d suggest downloading it for a listen; just in case.

Also available is WMD …and other distractions which is a similar project, from a year earlier.

In the mail today I also find my copy of Negativland‘s No Business which revels in its illegality as far as any copyright lawyer would be concerned.

From the No Business liner notes;

All elements used to re-compose the audio tracks on this release were analog recorded and digitally manipulated, edited, and mixed by Negativland. No elements original to Negativland were used to make these recordings.

This is a piece of art. There are hundreds of copyright encumbered images and samples in this package, and the Little Mermaid mpeg video and the essay booklet in the package are worth the price of admission. Sure, you could just download the Official Torrent for the video from the artists’ website, but this package comes with a “secret rubber novelty surprise” in the form of a Whoopie Cushion; imprinted with a nice big copyright logo.

Oh, and No Business is released under a Creative Commons sampling license which I find rather amusing in its own right; as you know the lawyers would say you can’t license something that you don’t own to others.

Hey, if you don’t know what these guys sound like by now, here’s the deal on this thing: they clipped out, cut up, and re-imagineered all the found sound they could get into their computer, and out came “NO BUSINESS”. It’s in a deluxe 5 x 11 inch die cut sleeve that comes with a laff-a-minute CD tribute to stealing and jamming popular culture, and a 56 page essay about the cultural public domain which isn’t one bit funny, just for contrast. And then, just when you’re getting all serious, there’s a trademarked Copyright Whoopee Cushion included in every package, as well as a “Universally Computer Compatible Video Short™.” This video, which uses one of Negativland’s old chestnuts of criminal music, “Gimme The Mermaid,” was made working with a now former Disney animator using Disney’s own computers to create it and render it after hours when they weren’t looking! — Negativeland.com

Also worth checking out: http://www.illegal-art.org/