Adam Martin is a sound artist with a history of experimental music projects, the majority of which use heavily treated samples. With a love of the ethos of plunderphonics and a general disregard for other artists’ work, he has developed his own glitch-fuelled aesthetic.
“Conceived as part of a Digital Music and Sound Arts master’s project (which used plunderphonic techniques to represent the recognised types of Attention Deficit Disorder), The Blart Side of the Mall represents Limbic ADD, a serious disorder manifesting symptoms similar to clinical depression. Those experiencing its effects are at risk of having their lives becoming very dysfunctional and unhappy.
“This piece samples a pitched down Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Big Gig in the Sky’ coupled with ‘Best Bits of Paul Blart Mall Cop 2,’ sampled from YouTube and treated heavily with effects to give the sense of both hyperreality and nostalgia. The choice to couple these was inspired by another YouTube video in which several comedians listen to The Dark Side of the Moon over the top of Paul Blart to see if they match up.
“By obsessively resampling and rendering the film and audio clips, I longed to create the sadness of Limbic ADD. It is a lucky coincidence that two specific film clips bookend the piece—Paul’s mother being hit by a van, and Paul on his back in the hotel lobby—but they provide an ethereal sadness, in the realm of someone on their deathbed recounting their life.
“Overall, the intent of this project was to explore how distractions happen whilst trying to make an introspective and ‘meta’ piece that is so self-referential it has more in common with an ouroboros than with any of its contemporaries.”
