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195 Orgasms and 45 Minutes of Crying: Eugene Mirman Releases the Most Absurd Box Set Ever

You can order it in the following formats: vinyl, digital, chair, robe.

via Sup Pop

Eugene Mirman's comedy often incorporates elements of performance art and that sentiment is certainly present in his new nine-volume, seven-LP box set I'm Sorry, (You're Welcome) which comes out today on Sub Pop Records. Yes, the same Sub Pop that put out albums by Mudhoney and Wolf Parade. Originally conceived by Mirman, the comedian and Bob’s Burgers star, a decade ago, the box set features a full stand-up set as well as over 500 additional tracks including a guided meditation, an erotic fuckscape, a sound effects library, and a collection of digital drugs which range from marijuana to apple cider vinegar. After that things start to get really weird.

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The collection also features over 45 minutes of actual crying, a guide to Russian phrases, ringtones, outgoing voicemail greetings, and, of course, 195 consecutive orgasms. The album won't be available on compact disc but will be released digitally or on vinyl. Additionally, you can purchase it in the form of an embroidered robe with an embedded audio player or a $1200 armchair that's been custom outfitted with speakers. (Note: It looks like the armchairs are all sold out.) Mirman will be doing a show this evening at the Bell House in Brooklyn to celebrate the release. No word on if he will be orgasming or crying onstage, but you never know.

Noisey: My first question is how exactly would you describe a "fuckscape?"
Eugene Mirman: It's mood music except it's partially music and partially just words. I would describe it as a romantic soundscape to fuck to.

How did the idea for the box set come along? Is it something you wanted to do for a long time?
I think I had originally conceived it as sort of a joking hundred-disc thing but I knew I couldn't really do that. Then at some point I was like, "a ten-disc set is also quite silly and actually I really could do that, so I decided to record the crying because I always thought about having an album that would have a sticker on it that said "featuring over 45 minutes of crying" as if that were something people had been clamoring for. You know, like "the crying demos recorded in 1968." In the process of doing that, I realized I didn't know enough about engineering and fidelity, although I did successfully record all the crying which also turned out to be moderately exhausting. I talked to my friends Matt [Savage] and Christian [Cundari] who record music in Boston and asked for their advice and it became clear it would be fun for all of us to work on this together, so I started taking trips to Boston to try different things.

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I feel like it's hard for me to cry in general. What was your technique? Did you just think about sad stuff?
A lot of it was thinking about sad things but I think there's also a fear of failing. So I was just like, I have to do this and I'm recording it and it has to work. So I just sort of did it, you know what I mean?

Did you have to listen back to it a lot? I feel like that would be very weird.
The funniest part is when I was recording the crying and the orgasms I thought that I wouldn't have to listen to it, but then the truth is that the crying has to be mastered it's like, "OK, let's make sure it's not too loud in the latest actual version of it." So we all had to listen to it four or five times just to check that it sounds right. It's a thing that I don't' think I thought through when I decided it would be funny to do this. No one, or very few people, who put on the whole album will listen to all of the crying but I had to listen to it five times. The thing with the orgasm is, we actually recorded more orgasms because we'd be like, "that sounds too much like orgasm #78." So we would just cut it and reorganize it. An absurd amount of effort went into a lot of that stuff.

Is it weird to put so much work into parts of the box set that people will likely ignore or skip through?
I think it's fine. I'm sort of the mind of "I really wanted to make this thing and I think people will listen to various parts in different ways." I think some people hopefully will use the ringtones as their actual ringtone or make a video with the sound effects and some people will skip through it or come back to it in years. I hope no one listens to all of the crying and then is mad they listened to it, you know? I hope someone isn't on orgasm #192 and goes, "well that was pointless!" I don't know who that person would be and I would be impressed to meet them. It's sort of like we worked for a long time on this fun, odd thing, I think people should listen to the things they think they'll enjoy. I feel like the fuckscape and meditation are pretty clear things you can enjoy; digital drugs you can listen to in pieces and I bet if you lie down and close your eyes it would be both funny and trippy. We included binaural tones in every digital drug, the rule was that it had to be the thing it was pretending to be.

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Do you think someone could actually learn to speak Russian if you listened to your instructional LP?
Absolutely. My conjugation is flawed but when I say, "your family smells like trash" I'm definitely teaching you to say "your family smells like trash." Whether you want to say that to someone, I don't know! But I made sure that if you repeated any of the things I said anyone Russian would be understand you. However what you might be trying to say is "Can I buy drugs on this airplane?"

How does it feel for this to go from a silly idea to a physical thing that people can buy?
That's totally incredible but that's not it. Then I was also like, "I really want my album to be a chair and a robe." That's something I said to Sub Pop in the very beginning of this and they were all like, "Yeah, I think we can do that." Now I have this robe that's been embroidered on the back and a special pocket that contains a pre-loaded MP3 that's a real thing. There's also a furniture maker that's refurbishing a chair that he's installing the album into with speakers and stuff so it's amazing. Again, it's been a period of years where I would record ten minutes of sound effects or ringtones and revisit it, you know? Week after week and then slowly built up to what we thought was reasonably funny.

Was the stand-up portion of the album something you had been working on for a while?
Yes. I also really wanted it to be a thing where I'm releasing ringtones instead of a new stand-up album. I really wanted it to be like, "Here is the stand up I've been working on for the past few years and a really enjoyable show and also I would like for a very slight or no markup give you eight other things." That's the other thing, the digital version is only 15 dollars. It's not priced exorbitantly, it's just that I wanted to make a really ridiculous record and Sub Pop and my friends and I all facilitated it. [Laughs.]

Do you think you'll get a chair?
I might buy one. Right now I think there's two being made and I think Sub Pop might want one of them. I've had people reach out but I think when there are photos about the chairs, that's when people will want to buy. Because right now, “chair” could be anything within the scope of chair, but supposedly it's a neat chair. I think there are two versions: One is plush 80s chair and the other more modernist.

I'm sure in the least, you'll get a free robe.
Right. Someone recently told me that another artist released a robe with their album and I was like, "My album doesn't come with a robe, my album is a robe!"

Have you sat down and considered the fact that the same label who put out Nirvana's Bleach is releasing your fuckscapes?
Yeah, I mean it is amazing. [Laughs.] I am delighted. The other thing is that I've spent a very long time with my friends working on this really specific, odd sort of project and now finally I am talking about it and people are hearing it and it's like actually something that exists and it's amazing to me that it's really thing. It's like "really?" I love it.