Sound art links: Gregory Whitehead

The tracks by Gregory Whitehead were very creepy and made me feel uncomfortable. At the same time though, I could not stop listening to them. I could easily imagine playing some of the tracks within a haunted house. In "If a Voice Like, Then What?", the first narrator made the track begin to sound like a old, normal documentary. Then the track quickly turns offbeat and the narrator changes to a different man who sounds seductive but also strange. The random mix screeches, moans, and laughs that are to represent the "voice problems" are introduced by this strange and seductive narrator. He is trying to make these voices seem attractive to listener, even though they are frightening. After a lengthy introduction of the many "voice problems", the other narrator's voice ends with an advertisement for a cure for these voices. It is a weird contradiction that the one voice is trying to fix these strange voices, yet the main voice is asking the listener if they would take pleasure in the voices. It reminds me a horror film, but within a spoof of a commercial or advertisement for a prescription. A lot of Whiteheads early tracks gave the same creepy, but enjoyable effect. "Display Wounds" and "Eva Can I stab bats in a cave?" were especially disturbing. It seems that throughout most of the early tracks on the sound website, Whitehead likes to play the words and language in peculiar ways.