A compilation of mash-ups / mixes created from early June to late September 2018, by Steve Layton from tracks contributed to the weekly worldwide online Sound-In event (www.soundin.org).

Since early 2009, various musicians around the world have checked in weekly at a web site first known as "ImprovFriday", and later "Sound-In". From Thursday afternoon (US Pacific time) through Saturday evening, any and all are free to share newly composed or improvised tracks, hear each other’s work, discuss and connect.

Part of my own working style these past 30 years is the mash-up, remix, or audio collage. Never being much of a live performer, averse to microphones and limited in the equipment I could call my “studio,” I’ve often resorted to integrating (or sometimes, dissembling) others’ recorded music and sound into newly composed pieces of my own.

Improvisation is often performed solo, but just as often as a group venture. At Sound-In we had many great solo tracks being offered up; yet many times I’d be struck by how sympathetic this artist’s track was with another’s, and would imagine how wonderful if the distance between us became immaterial and these two, three or four could be playing in the same space and time. And well, given that we were dealing with recordings, why not? By using my own expertise and ear I could bring the individual tracks together, bring people into the same “room” as it were, and create wholly new and convincing works in the process.

Few of these tracks were altered in any drastic way, which is why I don‘t think of them as “remixes;” rather, most of the tracks heard here are left largely intact, simply laid over and against one another, with just some fades and general spatial processing applied. To me the process is much closer to ikebana -- the Japanese art of flower-arranging. There’s an abstract element of storytelling at work, too, though the specific story told by the title came only after the piece was finished.

The pieces in this compilation function as a documentary. They're presented in strict chronological order, just as each was made and offered up from day-to-day and week-to-week. Some Sound-In weekends have a general suggestive "theme" -- just a word or two -- and some of that can be heard as we listen to the tracks in order. It's a rather monstrous collection, clocking in at almost 3.5 hours, but full of variety and color. What's truly amazing is just how coherent these tracks, composed almost exclusively of chronologically and geographically unrelated solo improvisations, are. A lot of that is down to the endless creativity the participating musicians bring to each week's adventure. I admit to my own personality being strongly felt in each mash/mix. But I always try to preserve and show each of my fellow musician's voice in that mix as well.

-- Steve Layton / Seattle / 1 October 2018