Bull of Heaven is an experimental music band by Neil Keener and Clayton Counts, now run by Keener after the death of Counts in 2016. Its main source of infamy is for its abstract works, firstly, unusual pieces of "music", such as "289: CALCULOR", a flash file which plays notes based on the calculations you request or input, "237: Disordered Beyond the Naked Picture of Despair", an infinitely looping snippet of a longer jazz piece, and "262: The Insistence of Small Miracles", a recursive PDF file, and secondly, their infamously long songs. They have made at least 55 pieces of music which stretch a day or longer, for example, "028: Even to the Edge of Doom", which is exactly a day long, and the somewhat well known "210: Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws", over 5 years long, albeit a majority of it being lost to time, only leaving the first year or so. Their longest song, "310: ΩΣPx0(2^18×5^18)p*k*k*k", will be the main focus of this article.
If you look up 310, you get a 12 hour video of a small, looping sound effect. Not really anything special, I've already listed two longer songs... But that's just a snippet. If you look it up, the full length of the song is over 3.343 quindecillion (~3e48) years. Let's put it this way for perspective:
This is around 41.79 quattuordecillion (~4e46) times longer than you are likely to live
This is around 835.8 duodecillion (~8e39) times longer than the average species lasts
This is around 238.8 undecillion (~2e38) times longer than the age of the universe
This is around 1.12 septillion (~1e24) times longer than the half-life of Tellurium-128
This is around 1,045 times longer than the maximum proton half-life
While that's nowhere near Poincare recurrence time, it's sure something.
Let's look inside and see (WARNING: WHILE I'M NOT CONFIDENT ABOUT IT I THINK UNZIPPING THIS ALL AT ONCE WOULD BE THE EQUIVALENT OF A ZIP BOMB). When downloading, you will see it is not an mp3 or wav or some similar format, but a 7z archive. 7z files are known for a very high compression ratio while still being usable, making them very handy for a goliath like this, with its compression making it just under half a megabyte.
There are files inside the first folder, "Ω" (don't ask me how to pronounce that), titled from 0001 to 1000.7z. For the sake of simplicity I'll only be looking inside the first of each split.
Inside 0001.7z, there's a folder, "k", with more 7zs of the same name.
Inside the next 0001.7z, there's another folder, "Σ", with the same process, then another "k", then "P", then another "k", then "x", then "p", then "Christ" for some reason, then "Jesus", then "God", then "Help", "Me", and "Please"... At this point I start to wonder if the band was okay making this with these names.
Finally, one last 7z. There are 100 folder which each contain 10,000 audio files. Each file is 29 hours long.
So, basically, the song's so long because of nested 7zs on top of each other.
I have decided to coin a name for the length of 310, 3.343 quindecillion (short scale), being Clayton's number, after band member Clayton Counts. He played a major role in most of the band's most infamous decisions and unfortunately passed away in 2016. May he be remembered for his incredibly creative works.