Hear/Download Kurt Cobain’s Unearthed, Experimental Mixtape, “Montage Of Heck” (1986)

Dan­ger­ous Minds has helped unearth Kurt Cobain’s “Mon­tage Of Heck” — a 1986 exper­i­men­tal col­lage of sounds that Cobain culled from his “wide-rang­ing col­lec­tion of LPs, manip­u­lat­ed record­ings of the radio, … Nir­vana demos,” and oth­er audio sources. Made with a four-track cas­sette recorder, the 36-minute record­ing fea­tures sounds ripped from record­ings by Simon & Gar­funkel, The Bea­t­les, Cher, James Brown, John Den­ver, The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly, George Michael and Queen. But if you think you’re going to hear an upbeat sam­pling of pop songs when you click play, you’ve got anoth­er thing com­ing.

Over at Vimeo, you can actu­al­ly down­load the audio track, and there you will find one com­ment that puts the mix­tape into some per­spec­tive. Owl Berg writes, “It’s no sur­prise that Kurt col­lab­o­rat­ed with William Bur­roughs on The “Priest” They Called Him. They were so obvi­ous­ly on the same wave­length. Here we have evi­dence of Kurt apply­ing the cut-up tech­nique which comes straight from Bur­roughs’ writ­ing and tape exper­i­ments, with results that are equal­ly fun­ny and fright­en­ing and mind-blow­ing and essen­tial to scrub­bing our minds clean of our pre­con­cep­tions about sound.” You can revis­it Bur­roughs’ and Cobain’s 1992 col­lab­o­ra­tion by vis­it­ing this post in our archive.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)