Barbara Golden

Whipping The Boys (1981-99)

8:00

Analysis by Matthew Kober

A salacious radiophonic romp, this piece appears to meld EA and BDSM. Two major sonic elements are present almost throughout, vascillating in relative amplitude with recorded conversation. The first is a moog synthesizer being put through its paces with someone going rank on the knobs. The placement of this sound in the stereo field remains centred and slightly to the left.The over-the-topness of the knob tweakage lends itself well to the giddy chaos that one feels through the snippets of the conversation.

The second major element that persists until 05:30 ia a totally right-panned popping sound. This could possibly be synthetic in origin and sounds like pingpong balls falling downstairs, or down-pitched corn popping. This is replaced at 05:30 by more synth tones that hum and arpeggiate madly in upward and downward sweeps.

Fading in and out of the piece is the third element in this equation, the conversation. At once silly and strange, it imparts a sense of voyeurism, as if you are seated at a nearby table and hearing patches of this group's conversation. We hear raucous bits of laughter and a near-description of some event which seems like one just "haddabethere" to fully get. What you do get is food, laughter and whipping. My kinda people. However... I never did find out what the Basque torte was..

Spectral analysis of "Whipping The Boys"

04:30 to 05:00