Edmonton artist hundredmillionthousand makes music from the most intimate moments

Sooooo … suppose one has the crazy, potentially creepy-in-the-wrong-hands idea to construct an entire high-concept experimental electronic album about human sexual intimacy’s transformation into “a warped commodity, ready for consumption” during the online-dating era from audio recordings of actual humans introduced through online-dating apps actually engaging in human sexual intimacy as source material.

Where does one even start?

Noel Fanaeian, the Edmonton electronic composer better known to a nascent core of transatlantic followers by the enigmatic alias hundredmillionthousand, might be a good person to ask since he’s done exactly that on his wildly creative sophomore EP, “Attention Span.” How, exactly, did he do just that?

“My response to that is: Craigslist is a wonderful place, “ chuckled Fanaeian down the line from Alberta one evening after the record’s release late last year, admitting he had very little difficulty obtaining the numerous consensual, if generally unrecognizable, “field recordings” of people’s most private moments alone with each other’s private parts that form the foundation of “Attention Span.”

“I put up an ad and I was very transparent: ‘I have this weird audio-art project and if you met your spouse or partner through an online dating platform, I have a small honorarium for you if you want to do a recording.’ I showed them my social media and my past work and all that stuff to demonstrate ‘Look, I am an artist, I am not a creep.’

“And people were stoked on it. They were, like, ‘This is cool. I love money and I love having sex so I’ll do it.’”

A hypercomplex stream of pixelated, ping-ponging audio collage, plangent piano, battering digital percussion, sawing/soothing cello and stand-up bass supplied by members of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and angelic chorales generated throughout by endlessly multi-tracking Edmonton soprano Colleen Iversen, “Attention Span” is easily one of the most compelling and brazenly accomplished releases of 2022, Canadian or otherwise.

Challenging, too, admittedly and very much Not For Everyone, but also very much the sort of thing that people who are into things that are very much Not For Everyone will enjoy very much. It’s the sort of obscurantist outlier, in fact, that might easily prick the ears of, say, Polaris Music Prize if anyone were to put it in front of them.

Thus far, hundredmillionthousand’s audience lies abroad, rather than at home. Fanaeian had just returned from a short tour of Europe when we spoke, in fact, although the release of “Attention Span” on Nov. 18 has generally flown above the radar here in Canada. Suffice it to say, however, that if names like Autechre and Aphex Twin, Holly Herndon and Laurel Halo — the former an admitted influence on hundredmillionthousand’s abstract techno-commentary, the latter a sometime mentor — or the work of such fellow Canadian electro-explorers as Tim Hecker, FOONYAP, Egyptrixx and Venetian Snares mean anything to you, you’ll likely want to dive in.

Regardless, it’s amazing that Fanaeian, a chemical engineer by day, not just conceptualized the whole thing in the first place, but actually saw it through.

“Attention Span” began to take shape in his mind, he recalls, during a brief stint spent living in Toronto in 2017 trying to jump-start his musical career during the aftermath of a breakup. Friends suggested he try dating apps to get back in the relationship game, but the experience left him suffering a kind of “emotional exhaustion” over the rapidity with which people were entering and exiting his life.

“It was this weird sort of stimulus where you meet someone and there’s a bit of excitement and then it kinda plateaus and then it’s done and then you’re, like, ‘Damn, that sucked, ’” he said.

“But then there’s a new one. And then it’s this weird, weird cycle that’s just kinda providing hits of dopamine to people.

“I was, like, ‘Maybe I just suck at this or maybe it’s not for me.’ But the reason I thought this was significant was everyone I’d spoken to in my friend circle was going through the same thing. Anyone who’s tried these apps are kind of experiencing this digital battleground. So I guess I just kind of felt that it’s very relevant to the time and what’s happening to person-to-person relationships.

“And it’s not just dating apps.

“My mother is Filipino. She was raised in a small city called Naval in the province of Biliran and she told me ‘Noel, when I was your age, I had 20 friends my age. I knew 20 people, 20 peers.’ And when you think about everyone’s Facebook ‘friend’ groups or Instagram followers or Snapchat followers, everyone is aware of, honestly, a few thousand people but they have a small amount of people that they interact with that they see ‘in person’ and they have a smaller group that’s actually part of their lives.

“And I think that these apps and social media and online networking have made us spread ourselves so thin socially to the point where we’re no longer actually socializing or providing value to each other anymore. We’re just on our phones all day getting hits of stimulus and tiny notification rings here and there, and we think we’re getting satisfied and that we’re connected but we’re not actually having positive relationships. Y’know, we’ll leave the bar or a birthday early to go home and just sit at our phones.”

Fanaeian’s goal with “Attention Span” was, thus, to create something permanent out all these “deconstructed sex noises” gathered from within the impermanent fray of online dating, “an arena where you can be in a relationship and, if it’s not going well, you can replace that person by the end of tonight if you want to.” And, yes, he realizes there’s some irony involved in using state-of-the-art technology to create music and art that purports to criticize society’s reliance on technology.

“The electronic world, the experimental world — and I’m a participant in this — has always had a huge fetish for new technology and esthetics and things that are very futuristic, “ said Fanaeian, currently planning a more human-centred choral album in the modern-classical vein.

“But it feels like we’re incorporating technology for the sake of technology sometimes. I’ve always thought that tools in music and art are just tools and they should be used to create something bigger and this album was kind of a means to put a mirror up and ask ‘How are we letting technology affect ourselves? How is technology affecting interpersonal relationships, romance, love and dating?’”