I have decided to institute a new system of time on myself. I call this system "trackfour" (or base 14.5 in academic circles), as the standard unit of time measurement is the 14.5 second loop that repeats itself for over forty minutes at the end of the fourth song on Tristeza's Insound Tour Support EP.

I can only indoctrinate you into my new concept of time by putting this loop of sound into perspective. If you were to put this disc into a CD player, jump to track four, and just start running, you would be running for over forty minutes before the song ended. And during that forty minutes, you would be subjected to a 14.5-second-long loop of some backwards music sample (similar to the ones Unwound used all over Future of What). The sample doesn't change! And it's repeated for over forty minutes!

If you can't run for forty minutes, try a race between a load of laundry and the repeated sample. I bet that regular cycle (cottons and knits) beats it. Listen to the 14.5-second-long loop as the laundry goes through its own loops and churns. Can you find the splice point in the loop? Is there one? I'm tellin' you, after hours of this, you'll begin to wonder. ...But the laundry is done in only 35 minutes!! It beats the loop! Do you understand now?

I listened to the loop six times in a row over the last four hours. I've listened to it a total of 133 times this week. On the 56th time through, I started hatching up my notion of "trackfour" time. I noticed that things seemed to happen at a constant rate of 14.5 seconds per loop when listening to the "trackfour." Our modern clocks function according to this concept, completing a full "trackfour" cycle every 30 hours. With this taken into account, the network primetimes shift through the day as weeks go on. And even days and weeks seem to lose their validity as appointment placeholders.

Ahh... the album has cycled back around to the first song. "Trackfour" time is at a standstill for a brief sitting period. In the meantime, the opening song sounds like a cross between Tel Aviv, early Tortoise, and "Tooth Fairy Retribution Manifesto" off Rodan's Rusty. The second track (untitled, just like the rest) sounds like Tel Aviv, Tortoise, and "Tooth Fairy" put together and remixed. And then there's the third track, which brings us back to another unmixed combination of the three T's.

I don't know if my soul can stand to enter "trackfour" time again. It's too much for one man to endure. Perhaps I can take these headphones off. No. I cannot. I must live in "trackfour" time now to survive! The shift in perception would drive me to the end of my sanity. I will instead go to bed with the headphones on and sleep. Yes... sleep. And then hit snooze in 14.5-second-long intervals.

-Chip Chanko