' "Compop 2.5: Megamegamix" was B'O'K's 2nd installment in the now-sprawling Compop series. Produced around the turn of the century ("just after Madonna's 'Music' album came out," recalls the artist), it was a hyperblended copyright stomp through the hits of yore, predating GirlTalk's eventual adoption of the megamegamix form by about 3 years ("at the time, GirlTalk was still a glitch-noise project," Buttress remembers).

Intended to be heard as one continuous piece, "Compop 2.5: Megamegamix" was divided into many parts that flow seamlessly into one another, a flow made problematic by the gaps created by the modern mp3 format. B'O'K has avoided this problem by providing, in addition to the separate pieces playable here, the entire album again as one single album-length no-gap mix, available at archive.org/details/MegamegamixMegamegamixMix.

As well as "mashing up" a multiverse of hits and memories, B'O'K claims that the album "also has an implied revolutionary narrative", with references to the individual's ability to "reclaim culture and rework it for themselves, regardless of the corporate oligarchy's property-based stranglehold on creativity". From the conflicting cries of Jim Morrison ("You Can!"... "You Cannot!"), to Pink Floyd's admission that all samples are now part of "the Machine", to David Bowie's re-arranged claim "We can recycle... forever and ever!", the album not only works as flippant tomfoolery, but as a deep philosophical treatise on cultural re-appropriation.

Equally forward-thinking as it is incredibly dated, this hystorical relic (both of B'O'K's working methods, and the media environs at the turn of the century) is finally available to the general public for the first time ever, completely unedited ("maybe I should've edited it, actually" says the artist, "some bits are too long, some bits are a bit sloppy, and some bits just don't really seem to work at all anymore. Oh well, fuck it"). '

Department of Desperate Clutching / Hystorical Archivement
IWML, 2014

NOTE: the original artwork, hand cut with scissors and glue, can no longer be found. The artwork presented here is entirely new.