My Story
Welcome to Recombinant Culture! Here's my long back story; settle in.
I first encountered intertextuality as a tween in the 1970s, watching and hearing the multimedia mashup of Wagner and 'Apocalypse Now'; of Strauss and '2001: A Space Odyssey'. My fascination with it never waned over 40 years, and it fueled both my Masters and my PhD degrees.
But then 'adult' life took hold, and it wasn't until the COVID-19 pandemic settled in that I began to become profoundly restless with my career; I needed a creative outlet that sidestepped the downsides of decision-by-committee and collaboration; something that was exclusively mine, and which added (however incrementally) some beauty and joy into the world.
Coincidentally, around that time I encountered the idea of mashup art on the internet. Some of it was good, most of it was just okay, but I thought "eh, I'm pretty sure I could do better - it's just [nerd alert!] an articulation of narrative congruence through vertical intertextuality, after all." It was my graduate degrees brought to life, totally my wheelhouse. I quickly decided to put my money where my mouth was -- I had to teach myself Photoshop to do it, but it was COVID and I had loads of evening and weekend time for that.
So I did. And I loved it. It was astonishingly gratifying. Changed my life. I'd always been a music guy, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with all the wonderful takes I could make on all my favourite songs by finding the right vintage book covers and posters to bring them to life. I wondered: "could other people out there also get a kick out of these, like me?" and so I started a tentative online business; it started with some relatives and close friends and then it took off; it's been a roaring success ever since. It turns out that loads of music fans around the world are as tickled by my 'intertextualized' mashups as me; I've never looked back. I still have my day job, but this is my passion.
I'm a proud Gen Xer, so my love of New Wave and classic alternative music is strong. But I grew up on the classics of Pink Floyd and The Beatles, so they're here too. And I keep up with indie and alternative rock, so I'm pretty current. I know many of the songs in my catalogue are obscure, but, hell, I love them all. And if you love a specific song that you can't find in my catalogue, and you'd love visualized in this way, send me a message -- let's talk about it, and work something out.
Detailed answers to most common questions
Posters! Absolutely posters, never actual books. I know they might look like book covers, but that's the joke: these are song titles made to look like books, or magazines, or movies, or vintage ads. But they're not. Please grasp this fact: you're buying a poster (paper, framed, on canvas, or on a Sonos speaker cover), and not a paperback novel written by your favourite artist or band.
Your poster/s will not arrive with the purple ovals - they're only there in an effort to keep some of the more aggressive lawyers at bay. You can probably figure out what's under them, anyway -- but if you're in doubt, please email me as ask for more information. A 'redaction' is usually a big black bar through classified or sensitive information, so here it's used in the same way.
It is! We use a global fulfillment company that enables us to print at a printing company local to you, in 32 countries, and then shipped to you from there. It's fast, and all shipping costs are baked into the price you see here. It also means no import or customs fees.
If you need something expedited, then please message me before you buy - there are several super-fast shipping options available (up to overnight) with corresponding premiums.
Ah, my #1 challenge. The paper sizes here are standard, but the images I use are not - in fact, they're not even the same from print from print. Most of my posters use real, vintage paperback novel covers as their base visual, and they're notoriously tall and thin, which means the horizontal top/bottom borders on the printed page are going to be thinner than the vertical side borders, which are thicker. It's perfectly normal and necessary, otherwise the image will looked stretched and wrong.
If you're dead-set on having a photograph-style print, with the images stretched to fit the absolute maximum space on the page, then please reach out to me and we can work together to reach a solution.
Absolutely! I'm happy to take on requests for any song you like. As long as you're content for it to join the rest of my catalogue, the prices will be the same for everything else I sell - no premium or extra. Just send me a message with your idea, and we'll chat. If you want an exclusive commission, though - something that won't be available to the public - then send me a message so we can figure that out offline: it's certainly possible, but will involve a premium cost.
Yes I can - no problem. Ping me your request and we'll figure it out. In 99% of cases, there's no extra cost involved in making that happen for you.