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All Music Guide:
Evolution Control Committee is one of the stage names of Mark Gunderson, a musician, performance artist, digital manipulator, and provocateur who has also performed as part of the Weird Lovemakers, the Mood Swingers, Gaga, Mellodeath, and DJ Pantshead.
Evolution Control Committee is the longest-lived of Gunderson's many projects, having started in the early '90s as a tape manipulation project. Gunderson used a cheapo double cassette deck and a four-track recorder to manually edit together the tracks for his early cassette-only releases Buddha Bleach (1990), The Last Mall (1991) and Gunderphonic (1994), which were modestly enhanced by his sampling keyboard and trusty Amiga. This early material was largely guided by the spirit of early Negativland: it was clever enough to make up for the lack of polish, and it was generally humorous enough overall that the occasional pointed barb was still well-received.
With the release of the Gunderphonic cassette, people started to pay attention, thanks to the inclusion of a pair of tracks that matched Public Enemy vocals up with Herb Alpert instrumentals. Many who are familiar with the "mashup" or "bootleg" genre (circa 2001/2002) credit Gunderson as one of the forefathers of the style; in fact, the ECC track "Rebel Without a Pause (Whipped Cream mix)" has appeared on several compilation albums, otherwise filled with tracks put together seven years later.
Following the minor stir caused by the release of these groundbreaking tracks, Gunderson capitalized on his newfound fame by, well, laying low. He played around Columbus under several different names, and with several different collaborators. Still, during the last half of the '90s, Evolution Control Committee released a video called The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized (a specially edited subliminal cassette that was either motivational or demotivational depending on which side you played), the Compact Discstructions cassette, and the first ECC CD release Double the Phat and Still Tasteless.
1999 saw the release of Evolution Control Committee's most contentious release, the "Rocked by Rape" single. The track featured several months worth of Dan Rather newscasts whittled down to just the most inflammatory and overwritten soundbytes, placed on top of a hacked-up version of AC/DC's classic "Back in Black." It was a track that had lawsuit written all over it, and soon afterwards, Gunderson was issued a cease-and-desist order from CBS News. Gunderson played the "fair use" card and the issue seemed to go away.
The incident got the attention of longtime ECC heroes Negativland, who not only wrote a letter to CBS in support of Evolution Control Committee, but also released Evolution Control Committee's second full-length CD, Plagiarhythm Nation, Vol. 2.0, on Negativland's label, Seeland.
Wikipedia:
The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in Columbus, in 1987. It typically uses uncleared and illegal samples from various sources as a form of protest against copyright law. The ECC also produces numerous audio experiments, such as the disfiguring of compact discs in live performance, known as "CDestruction", and has produced a few video works as well, ranging from re-edited 50's corporate shorts to a Teddy Ruxpin reciting the works of William S. Burroughs. Other activities include culture jamming.
They are one of the pioneers of the mash-up or bootleg, where two or more songs are mixed together into a new track. According to Neil Strauss in the New York Times, "...many musical observers trace the official beginnings of the British bootleg scene to The Evolution Control Committee, which in 1993 mixed a Public Enemy a cappella with music by Herb Alpert." These are the now-classic "Public Enemy/Whipped Cream Mixes", with Public Enemy's inflammatory raps, "By the Time I Get To Arizona" and "Rebel Without a Pause" overdubbed onto instrumentals by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
The ECC is probably best known for its song "Rocked By Rape", consisting of samples of Dan Rather's deadpan delivery describing various atrocities over looped riffs from AC/DC's "Back in Black". This work brought legal threats against The ECC by CBS, but by 2003, CBS appears to have let the issue go by. "Rocked by Rape" was nationally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered in 2000. It was even played at a roast for Rather, which was later broadcast on C-SPAN.
Since 2000, Gunderson has performed his works on stage through an electronic instrument of his own invention: "The Thimbletron." It is made of a pair of gloves with ten thimbles attached at the ends of the fingers, which are then wired to a laptop computer. As the thimbles are touched together, the laptop in turn plays a different sound sample. Gunderson claims that the device uses "thimbletronium energy" and warns that "thimbletronic radiation can leak unexpectedly due to a mishap during a live performance. The audience is advised to attend Thimbletron performances at their own risk." Gunderson has also modified a bread toaster in a similar fashion, with each depression of a lever playing a sample.
The Thimbletron has been largely retired in public performances in favor of the Wheel of Mashup, in which audience members come up on stage and spin a wheel to randomly select the music and vocals to be combined. These are then mashed together in real time using the VidiMasher 3000, a large rear-projected touch screen used to control Ableton Live. [1]
Related Artists
Mark Gunderson also records as DJ Pantshead and performs with Cheese & Pants Theater, a comedy/performance art duo consisting of a giant pair of pants and a giant Parmesan cheese shaker who pantomime to bizarrely edited vintage audio, and as DJ John Philip Suicide with Dub Assault. Past projects have included the experimental performance troupe Gaga, several ECC performances at the Columbus Avant Garage film festival, and a release with the Weird Love Makers.
Other related artists include The Bran Flakes, Emergency Broadcast Network, Escape Mechanism, Negativland, John Oswald, People Like Us and The Tape-beatles.
Greg Gillis, in interview outtakes for the movie "RIP: A Remix Manifesto", admits that Evolution Control Committee was a major influence and inspiration to create the mashups for his artistic persona Girl Talk. Gillis even explains that the best description of Girl Talk's music is "Plunderphonics".
