Band releases album on "obsolete" 3.5" floppy disc

A UK band called Batch Totem has released a 74-minute album compressed down to fit on a 1.4MB, 3.5" floppy disk. Who need vinyl nostalgia?

"Trunkeret & Ikonisk" by Batch Totem (an alias for musician, Jonas Olesen) consists of 19 tracks, which are heavily compressed in the GSM 6.10 WAV format, at various bitrates. The album is on the Ristretto label, and can be bought online with PayPal.
"The idea is essentially to release an album on an almost obsolete medium that fits very well with the music on an aesthetical level," says Olesen. "Secondly, the scope of the project is to use heavy compression as a feature that shapes the music, instead of a limitation that reduces sound quality."

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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ssaargent

how about a Scotch DC 300XL. I still have a few for novelty.
felsby

“trunkeret & ikonisk” is pure, unadulterated danish for “truncated & iconic”. They may be from the UK, but Jonas is from Denmark! http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2007/09/dude-releases-74-minute-album-on-single.html
Dave X

Uhhh… there’s a whole netlabel that does this– Floppy Swop: http://www.floppyswop.co.uk/

Get with it, Boing Boing!
Phos….

Meh, PCPro.co.uk was only a month or so late with this story.

I guess their still keeping a ye olde magazine printer’s schedule?
flexatone

Forget 1.4 MB — Tristan Perich is a 1-bit minimalist.
jan

darn i wanted to do this once… maybe they could use a (dead cheap) 3.5 floppy drive as a case?
nex

Cory doesn’t read bb gadgets? o_O
Flying Squid

The band’s website has this awesome ly hilarious mp3 on it. I remember this speech used by Negativland in their song Michael Jackson. Man is it wild. Google the Church Universal Triumphant to find out who these loons are.

…and the movie Ghostbusters.
LOLcat Stevens

Well they don’t get my respect until they release their entire catalog on a 5.25″ disk full of chiptunes

And don’t go telling me that it would be too lo-fi. If it’s good enough for Timbaland to rip off, it’s good enough for primetime, i say…
Honeyschool Die

There’s a Toronto band called Garbage! Violence! Enthusiasm that released three songs on three 3.5″ floppies. The pack was called “Picard in Peril” and each song was about an episode of Star Trek where… well, you can guess the rest.

I can’t find any info about it online, but you can get it at Soundscapes.
Krisjohn

If they use the LS-240 FD32MB Superdrive’s 32MB format for 1.44MB floppies then they wouldn’t even have to do anything special with the music.

http://www.chguy.net/news/feb01/fd32mb.html
OM

…You know, I got a kick out of this one, but to be totally honest if you *really* want to impress me, release two more versions: one on a Hollerith deck, the other on Punch Tape :)
dculberson

They should really mess with people and release it in binary on audio tape.

TI 99/4a baby!! (or vic20 or …)
Alys

Would be interesting if I actually had a floppy drive…