Intermission: Bull of Heaven

Bull of Heaven is the name of a posthumous project of one Clayton Counts, of The Beachles' Sgt. Petsounds (in)fame, collaborating with a host of others (particularly Neil Keener, co-compiler, former member of Planes Mistaken for Stars*, now of Git Some), exploring the possibilities of sound art and music in the rapidly-advancing digital age. They have released several works of noise art under this moniker and, ironing out the problems with distribution of large files in the past couple of weeks, have now successfully surpassed the longest piece of recorded** music of which I was previously aware, Leif Inge's 9 Beet Stretch (and even this 24-hour extension of Beethoven's 9th Symphony was broken down into individual 80-minute files). At first they managed to match it (#028), before beating it with a single 37½ hour MP3 (#044). Subsequently they have blown this out of the water with a week-long (168 hours) MP3 (#045).

Word has reached me that work is being completed on a month-long file, with several more diverse pieces - they have already dabbled found sound (#013), rock music (#039) and cut-up (#040) - being planned in the near future, including one release that will mate the hitherto unmarried genres of doom metal and Hindi death chants. I also hear tell that whilst the recent long pieces are deep drones with very subtle changes, for the really long tracks they hope to have more noticeable progressions. Eventually, Bull of Heaven aim to have released one recorded track that spans a whole century.

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*At the bottom of this Wikipedia article you'll find a link to the PMFS's official website. Don't bother to follow said link as, instead of the promised website, you'll find one of those holding pages full of adverts which tell such charming miniature narratives as "American Singles | Diamond Engagement Rings | Real Estate Commercial | Interior Design | Debt Management | Hot Brazilian Girls | Medical Billing". Instead, you might prefer to drop by the band's MySpace page.

**So as to rule out non-recorded pieces such as John Cage's 639-year ORGAN² / ASLSP and Jem Finer's millenium-long Longplayer (streamable on-site) neither of which have, as yet, actually been set in any retrievable (which is not necessarily the same as physical) medium as complete pieces.