Bad Marriage Mantra

Erik Belgum: Bad Marriage Mantra (MP3) [NSFW]
One night in a hotel in Toronto, the Minnesota-based sound artist Erik Belgum was kept awake by a couple in the next room in the midst of a wild fight. After feeling angry at the disturbance, Belgum turned his artist’s ear to the situation and began to hear the potential for great drama.

Although the specific words were not audible, the fight seemed to have a rhythm of its own; there were crescendos and lulls, booms then whispers—not unlike the work of many of the greatest orchestral pieces. Phrases and sounds repeated themselves in almost predictable cycles. It went on for hours, without conclusion or closure. In the end, Belgum never found out who they were or what they were screaming about.
He took the whole experience and made a sound work out of it. Bad Marriage Mantra is Belgum’s brilliantly disturbing transformation of this irritating experience into a post-minimalist operetta. He got two actors into a studio and let them go at each other at the top of their lungs. The only lyrics are “Fuck you, you stupid prick!!!” or “Shut up!!” or “When I say shut up you'd better listen you stupid fucking bitch!!,” etc. for an hour. At first, it’s shocking; then, it’s funny. After a while, it’s really annoying. But finally, however, about a half hour into the disc you begin get the point—you start paying less attention to the words themselves and begin hearing the “music” in the midst of this hysterical onslaught.