I just ran across and downloaded a 1997 album called "Four Years in 30 Seconds." It's a compilation album of various (mostly UK) noise artists, each with one track roughly thirty seconds long (give or take). "Noise artists" ply a variety of instrumental, vocal and/or electronic music, but ALL benefit from the 30-second limitation, in my opinion. There were 25 tracks on the original vinyl, and for the CD reissue they took all 25 tracks and ran them in reverse afterward, for a total of 50 tracks and a length of about 30 minutes. Short and sweet.
Most of the pieces don't suffer any damage at all from being run backward(!)
The set recalls a very famous album put together by British keyboardist Morgan Fisher in 1980. For that album he invited a veritable who's who of British progressive music at the time to submit tracks not exceeding one minute. He got more submissions than he could use, ranging from genius miniaturizations to a few duff bits that were obviously just thrown together. The resulting album, "Miniatures" features fifty tracks from an unbelievable range of artists, and many tracks are among the best works these artists have done. The set was so successful that Fisher put together a "Miniatures 2" in 2000, extending his invitations to sixty artists all over the world. Both sets are dizzying compressed slabs of wonderful.
Also in 1980, in one of those examples of unbelievable coincidence, the California avant-garde group The Residents released their "Commercial Album," which consists of 40 one-minute songs. A purge of ideas, one imagines.
Anyway, for those of us with ADHD these ultrashort pieces are ideal.
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