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Sound Clip: Not the Olympics by Mark Marrington
This work is constructed entirely from sports sounds and comprises a series of sonic vignettes, each referring to one or more familiar sporting events. The compositional technique employed is essentially ‘collage’, or ‘found sound’ based, the latter referring to the use of actual recordings of the sounds concerned rather than trying to allude to them with traditional musical language and instruments, and is an approach more commonly associated with electroacoustic composers and sonic artists.
The track functions much like any conventional piece of music, containing elements that could be seen as both percussive (for example, balls) and melodic (for example, whistles), as well as recurring rhythmic material that quickly becomes familiar, such as running footsteps and a heartbeat. A composition about sports also lends itself particularly well to the precise, almost robotic, organisation associated with electronically produced music. A visit to the local gym will quickly remind one how mechanically repetitive most forms of sport and exercise can be, and of course such activities are often synchronized with electronic dance music.