MrDougDoug

Doug Kaplan operates under the alias MrDougDoug as co-founder of Chicago's experimental imprint Hausu Mountain. His solo output, like the plunderphonic experiments he conducts with label partner Max Allison in Pepper Mill Rondo, repurposes existing audio such as pop songs and YouTube clips into splintered arrangements, dense noise constructions, and hybrid forms. Certain projects respond directly to the U.S. political calendar; 2016's These Magical Numbers, for instance, lampoons bombastic nationalism. Through SOS Forks AI REM and its 2023 follow-up, MrDougDoug reshapes archived MIDI data into erratic, high-velocity tracks that evoke distorted game scores and degraded karaoke instrumentals.

Kaplan and Allison established Hausu Mountain in 2012. The label's first offerings featured recordings by their psychedelic outfits the Big Ship and Good Willsmith. The pair issued a split cassette, Mugen, Vol. 1, in 2013 under the respective names MrDougDoug and Mukqs. Kaplan's 2016 album SOS Forks AI REM applied extensive MIDI alterations, while These Magical Numbers, issued after the presidential election that year, assembled a 33-minute overlap of "The Star-Spangled Banner" versions sourced from YouTube. The noisier 2017 set Member the Election? Yeah, I Member. drew from pre- and post-election YouTube material and surfaced one week after the inauguration.

Kaplan and Allison unveiled E.D.M. in 2018 as the first full-length from their hyperactive plunderphonic project Pepper Mill Rondo, with the holiday collection It's Christmas Time! arriving the next year. In 2023 MrDougDoug issued I Am Sitting in a Cloud, extending a concept from E.D.M. that reassembles pop-song fragments into text derived from Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room; the new iteration cycled the material through repeated low-fidelity uploads and downloads until only treble remained. SOS Forks AI REM II, also released in 2023, further mutated MIDI sources via AI processes, machine listening, algorithmic randomization, and drastic tempo shifts.