Extended Play is a celebration of relatively longform audio recordings. Taking place on the summer solstice, Extended Play occurs when one of Earth's poles is at max tilt toward the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere, and our celebrations take form as DJ-style events, broadcasts, and listening sessions. Extended Play is organized by an artist called Ben Sisto, who is also hosting the first planned event on June 20, 2024, EST. It’s an idea; we’ll see where it goes.

Extended Play 001
with Deejay Robert Rhymin’
Thursday June 20, 2024
4:00 PM–12:00 AM, Free, 21+
Myrtle, East Providence, Rhode Island, USA

The set for the first Extended Play will consist of around 20 songs with an average runtime of 24 minutes each—works by Stevie Reich, DJ Screw, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, La Düsseldorf and others. Some tracks will be played off vinyl records; others from digital files.

This is a bit of a placeholder while we get the word out an encourage others to sign up. As of February 2024, it looks like there may be Extended Play events happening in New York City, London, and possibly Ohio. Please get in touch if you want to organize or learn more!

Anyone can host an Extended Play event, so long as you have some longform audio, a playback venue, and the program runs on the summer solstice.

There’s no set way to do this, but here are some suggestions.

• Make sure you’re free on the summer solstice.

• Think about the scale of your event—it’s duration, location, promotional needs, production needs, potential costs, all of it. Make sure it feels fun. This should not be a burden.

• Pitch the idea to a venue, or find a place you can set up your own PA system. Remember: people could say no for any number of reasons. If you’re turned down, move on to another location.

• Know that some venues may require events to have age restrictions due to local laws; this won’t impact your ability to get listed here but, it’s always nice to try and be as open to as many people / ages as we can.

• Think of some audio that works with that duration or other sub-themes.

• Create promo graphics / materials.

• Submit your info to the Extended Play site here.

• Tell everyone about your event.

• Run your event / have fun.

• After the fact, feel free to follow up and share set lists, pics, etc.

If you are hosting an Extended Play event and would like it listed here (not required), please let us know!

Note: While Extended Play is an open concept, the team behind this site maintains the right to deny / remove any listing should it be learned that individuals involved are being gross. This includes all forms of racism, sexism, ableism, and discrimination generally.

While you can simply set up, promote, and run an Extended Play event with no involvement from Ben or listing on this website, there are some things you get by keeping looped-in.

• Official Extended Play logo in a variety of formats and sizes for your posters.

• Some text that’s easy to copy and edit for press and promo

• An invitation to a pre-solstice video hang (Zoom) with other producers to connect

• Have your materials (flyers, etc) archived on the Extended Play website

• Have your set lists archived on the Extended Play website

• Potential inclusion on mailers from Ben / Extended Play (as space allows) and if any $ becomes avail for marketing

Long is subjective. An eight-minute pop song might be considered fairly long, whereas it’s a normal runtime for a disco edit. Sleep’s Dopesmoker clocks in at 63:63 which is pretty long, but it’s short in comparison to John Cage’s in-progress work As Slow as Possible. 23 Reasons to Play Grindcore from Bucket Full of Teeth clocks in at 4:24 which doesn’t feel long, until you compare it to other tracks that are 5-25 seconds long. Is Wayne’s 10,000 Bars one work, or a mixtape of several pieces that can be broken apart? What about DJ Screw’s June 27? Something like Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, while an important and singular work, is by definition an anthology—perhaps things like that don’t count? A 24 hour field recording of a field, played back to the same field might be fun, if not confusing for the creatures living there. There’s really no rule—long is whatever feels long to you.

This is a locally-made decision. Event organizers may opt to play back traditionally structured songs, field recordings, audio collages, film scores, or art pieces so long as they are long in duration and again, long is subjective.

This is a locally-made decision. Promoters, venues, DJs, artists, etc can opt for a totally freeform event, or a celebration of a particular media format. There are no restrictions on it being digital or analog.

While acknowledging deejaying is live performance, Extended Play has been conceived of as a “playback event” more than a live-bands kind of thing. That Phish cover group you’re in isn’t the look. However, you could play back a tape of Phish’s set from Big Cypress ‘99. If you wanted to do something like, record a free-jazz jam from 8am-2pm and play it back from 3pm-9pm, sure, press the envelope. Have fun.

Extended Play was founded by an artist called Ben Sisto, who also maintains this website. It is loose, decentralized idea subject to interpretation by anyone who’d like to get in on the fun. A good reference point is Rafaël Rozendaal’s Bring Your Own Beamer project. Awesome Foundation is another.

Extended Play events are intended to be free and open to the public. Suggested donations are allowed so long as no individual would be denied entry based on lack of funds. These conditions are required to be listed on this website.

Extended Play is not a business, but Ben is an artist who occasionally applies for grants and things. It is possible that funding will be sought to offset the time and management of this project should it grow, but it is unlikely to be a cash cow. Feel free to use the concept brand, language, logos, etc when applying for grants or resources that support your own Extended Play events.

Extended Play is CC-O, or in the Public Domain. This means anyone can do whatever they’d like with the name, logo, concept, etc. Ben Sisto maintains this website, which you can think of as the first Extended Play website more than the only one possible. It’s always nice to get links back or credit, but nicer to know the idea is free to live its own life. Have fun, be kind, etc.

Extended Play’s logo was created by Elizabeth Goodspeed. When you sign up to host an EP event, you’ll be sent high res versions of the logo along with some suggested promo poster layouts.