December 12, 2012, 4:19 pm
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Hello, my name is TD Cruze and I am a 20 year old hip-hop producer from Valdosta, Georgia.
I thought you'd like to know that I just released the first ever instrumental hip-hop album that contains no instruments - just animal noises."
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Now THAT'S the kind of email I like to get. Hot damn! What a concept. And what an execution, too - only 6 songs, but a more utterly mental release you have not heard all year. You could even dance to it, although the idea of a club full of kids dancing to sampled animal sounds is too surreal to contemplate.
If you couldn't handle my last post of animals "singing" christmas songs, maybe these critters will float your boat (orark, as the case may be). Listen/buy here:
Hey, ya cheap bastards, you say you don't wanna pay to download the whole album? Mr. Cruze is allowing me to post one free song for y'alls, the hyena-voiced "Laughing Matter," available
HERE.
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December 13, 2012, 2:41 pm
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Buster Boris Pocket Naumoff is the youngest son of Troy Naumoff,the grown-up behind the kids noise band Electric Fence, and Troy has recorded baby-boy taking a 14-minute space-jazz organ solo. You can, and should, get it here:
Next time someone mocks you for listening to free-improv music by saying, "My kid could do that!," politely ask: "Really? Have they made any albums? I'd like to check 'em out..."
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December 14, 2012, 4:55 pm
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The Caring Babies describe themselves as "experimental, electronic" but these absurdly cute, cuddly songs ain't exactly Stockhausen. Tip-off #1: the band name, #2: the teddy bears on the cover. Their new release is 4 songs in under 4 minutes of irresistible silliness and willful innocence. Then there's the unexpected noise blast at the end, which had me asking, "What did I just listen to?" Listen: The Caring Babies "Gold Friends"Buy: the 7" recordDownload: the song "Gold Friends." Because friendship is special.
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December 17, 2012, 9:07 pm
William Shatner! Theremins! Daleks! Annoying child singers! Truly, this is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. If we must be subjected to Christmas music every year, at least let's make it bad/strange futuristic-y sci-fi songs. Space travel and Christmas - two things that have nothing to do with each other. So why are there so many songs about both? Maybe cuz kids love 'em both. Or because Santa's reindeer routine was a wormhole-like traveling thru space/time? Or cuz everyone gets sick of "White Christmas" after a while? Regardless, here are 24 mainly '50s/'60s songs collected over the years, stuffed into one handy stocking: SPACE-AGE SANTA(Is this divshare business working?)These tunes are mostly off hopelessly obscure 45s, but I added album/group info, if any)
01 Hal Bradley Orch wPatty Marie Jay - Space_Age_Santa_Claus02 Zoot, Zoot, Zoot Here Comes Santa In His New Space Suit - Tiny Tim and Bruce Haack (as previously discussed)03 Introduction-Hooray For Santa Claus - Miton DeLugg (from the badfilm classic "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians)04 I Cloned Myself For Christmas - Neutron 60605 Good King Wenceslas - Douglas Leedy (from a Buchla - not Moog - album from the late '60s that's all pretty cool, but this is the stand-out track.) 06 The Go Go's - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek (No, not those Go-Gos, this was a '60s British studio "group.")07 Outer Space Santa - Lawrence Welk's Little Band08 Santa and the Satellite - another proto-mashup from Buchanan & Goodman09 Northern Telecom - I Want An OC192 For Christmas 10 moog cookbook - santa claus is coming to town (time-traveling to the '90s for this nutty instro)11 Tim Dinkins_Santa's Rocket12 Take A Ride On Santa's Rocket - The Sounds Extraordinare13 Bobby Helms - Captain Santa Claus (Yep, the "Jingle Bell Rock" guy)14 Lothars - Oh Holy Night (great contemporary theremin group)15 barry gordon - Zoomah the Santa Claus from Mars16 The Servotron Evaluation of the Christmas Season17 Fountains of Wayne - I Want an Alien for Christmas (more actual not-old music! From their 2005 album "Out-Of-State Plates")18 a sonovox (a kind of '40s vocoder) version of "rudolph"19 troy hess - christmas on the moon (singing 6 year with thick hick accent - OUCH)20 William Shatner - Good King Wenceslas (hearing all the verses, recited in Captain Kirk's ponderous delivery, reminds me that I have no idea what the hell this song is about)21 Scene 1 Come Rejoicing-Its The Very Best Time of The Year-Make A Joyful Noise (from a kiddie xian xmas album I found in a thrift-shop called "Christmas 2001 A Space-Age Adventure"; I actually digitized the whole thing, but, believe me, you don't need to hear it)22 Christmas_in_the_Stars (from the infamous "Star Wars Christmas" album; I also have this one on vinyl - featuring a young Jon Bon Jovi! - but you REALLY don't need to hear the whole thing)23 MIT computer 1962 carols24 Space_Age_Santa _ Claus - Gus_de_Wert_Trio (Incredibly, a cover of track #1)
Thanks to J-Unit 1!
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December 21, 2012, 12:52 pm
Here's an idea who's time has truly come: a project called "Imagine" in which Mexican artist Pedro Reyes leads a team that takes guns donated from citizens of a county particularly wracked by violence and transforms them into musical instruments. Pistols form a guitar's body, gun barrels have holes drilled into them and made into flutes, or are arranged according to size into a xylophone, etc. The remarkable lyre pictured above is as much a triumph of visual design as musical. GoHEREto read/see the pics/watch the making-of vids. The video below is a 6-minute "Imagine Concierto" featuring the instruments. Yes, the music is based on the Lennon song, but even if you're sick of that tune, you must admit to how good these instruments sound, how well they're played, and just the general the awesomness of the project. The percussion in particular gets increasingly sorta funky as the song progresses. And I'm outta here til sometime in January. Much thanks to the many of you who have contributed to this-here web-log this year. Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men, and all that jazz.
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As I wrote last year: "Brandon Locher's "Conversations 2012" is a near-20 minute tour de force that does for prank phone calls what "The Velvet Underground & Nico" did for rock 'n' roll, uncovering unexpected depth and scope in what had been dismissed as childish nonsense.
What he basically did was call a store in a Johnstown, PA shopping mall and then did not speak. The "Hello? Hello" etc. response was recorded and then played to another shopkeeper in the same mall. Then their bewildered response was recorded and played for whoever answered the phone at yet another store in the same mall, and so on, until this game of tag went throughout the mall.
It does what a crank call is supposed to do - makes ya laff! - but there's much more going on here. It's ingeniously constructed, a well-edited piece of sound-collage, if nothing else."Locher's back with another epic of prog-prank, 15 minutes longer then the last "conversations," and we're not in a shopping mall anymore. Just random folks are the unwitting stars rockin' the mic here. The first couple minutes are just people saying "Hello?," but the random collisions eventually become fascinating, thought-provoking, hilarious, and, when the really ancient-sounding old ladies are talking, kinda poignant. I could listen to this all day - but bursting into laughter doesn't look so cool at the office.Brandon Locher "Conversations (Revisited)"
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January 11, 2013, 2:29 pm
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I've passed the 1000 posts mark. And boy are my fingers tired.On to 1001! Milvia Son Records from up in the Bay Area sent me a batch of their vinyl-only goodies, and the first thing you should know about 'em is that they've released an album by Can's first singer Malcolm Mooney. If that doesn't automatically score cool points, what will? They didn't send me that one (it sells itself, presumably), but there's other fun to be had in their catalogue of "head music" that bears little resemblance to most psychedelia or stoner rock currently being made.Milvia Son sampler1. Bad Drumlin Grass "All Night Long" - Bad grass? Actually, this New Wave-y tune from a 7" is made from good stuff, like synth farts and nonsense vocals. And nekkid ladies on the cover!2. Bad Drumlin Grass "Can Do" (excerpt) - Speaking of Mooney-era Can, I was digging this lengthy jam, the opening track to their album "The Invigorating Scent of …" and it reminded me of Can's "Yoo Doo Right." Then I checked the song title. So probably no coincidence. The song "Out on the Tracks" is an ill synth jam; the album gets increasingly jazzy/trippy, less groove-y as it goes on and the chemicals kick in.3. Bob Frankford "O Carl" - Totally ridiculous ode to Carl Sagan sung (?) over a mangled recording of the theme to Sagan's tv show "Cosmos." I shouldn't love this, but I really do. From the four-track 7" sampler "Just a Little Bit of Milvia Sun," which includes a pic of Dr. Carl, and a lengthy quote allegedly from the famous astronomer himself describing how great smoking pot is, e.g.: "Experiencing orgasms while high and listening to music, particulary electronic or 'psychedelic' music, is one of the greatest pleasures of my life.' Wow, did he really say that?4. Jaki Jakizawa " Period Fart" - All of side one of Jaki's album is super cool disco electro improv - like Giorgio Moroder goes free jazz. I spent part of the '90s looking for anyone who was doing to synths what Coltrane did for the sax, what Jimi did for the guitar, and not coming up with much besides Sun Ra. A much-welcome approach to the synth. The flip is drum-less cosmic electronica recommended to Tangerine Dream fans. And there might still be a few of them left.5. Old Yeller & The Pigbites - "The Wreck of the Jerome Garcia"/"Handsome Stranger" - This no-fi mess of acoustic guitars and vocals piled on top of each other makes Daniel Johnston sound as polished as Celine Dion, but some gems do rise thru the muck. ("Handsome Stranger" = Not Safe For Work.)By the way: If you are a Can fan, the new "Lost Tapes" box set really is a treasure-trove, not just a hodge-podge of leftovers, crappy-sounding live tracks, demos, etc, as these types of collections usually are.
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January 14, 2013, 4:28 pm
...tho I think she's at least 4 years old by now. Anyway, Stinky Picnic's long-awaited (by me, at least) follow-up to last years' swell "Cockles" has dropped, and it's even more swell. So swell, it is practically swollen, with more of dad's psychedelic minimalistic grooves and his girl's lyrics about monsters, birds, lizards (and the smelliness thereof), and, er, "bear mummies." And she can count up to 22. "...nearly 100% improvised live using loop pedals and piles of instruments." "Cat Collar" has such an ill groove that even those poor souls allergic to the charms of cute li'l girls will be nodding their heads to the shoegaze-y beat.
Stinky Picnic "Peaceful and Quiet"Pops sez: "Indigo said we should call it "Peaceful and Quiet" so that when people hear a track like 'Brains' they'll "totally freak out"! Man, I love that girl o'mine..." I feel ya, dad: yesterday, my daughter was singing "Old MacDonald" over an instrumental version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Baby's First Mashup! And she was making up lyrics about critters I don't recall being on Ol Mac's farm, like butterflies (..."with a flap flap here, a flap flap there..."). Already showing a healthy disregard for musical traditions.
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January 17, 2013, 2:15 pm
How's THAT for an album cover? I think you can see why I picked up this private-press piece of vintage vinyl recently - it truly is a slice of authentic Americana, a peek into un-hip rural backroads (in this case, Pennsylvania Dutch country) where Ma & Pa go out on a Saturday night to the local tavern and dance to the kind of music left out of the history books, performed by the sort of performer usually considered to be not worthy of critical consideration.Recorded live, Mr. Dutchman is clearly having a good ol' time, chatting with the crowd, letting loose with whoops and yee-haws! on occasion. Everything that doesn't sound like a polka (even the Elvis cover) is delivered in a wave-your-mug drinking song waltz-time. And might I direct your attention to the song that features our man playing the accordion and tap-dancing (!) at the same time. They don't make 'em like this any more. (Or do they? I suspect that this fellow might be the same guy.)The FLYING DUTCHMAN - ONE-MAN BAND
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January 22, 2013, 12:37 pm
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January 23, 2013, 4:43 pm
The Toilet Bowl Cleaners is a guy from Massachusetts. As I wrote last month when I posted "... 2 tracks off their album "Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee." The fact that such an album even exists is amazing; the fact that the Toilet Bowl Cleaners have many albums, all focused on the subject of human waste, and that some of the songs are actually good, is nothing short of mind-boggling. The main toilet-bowl cleaner sez that he's released 8000 songs in the last 4 years. That's kinda prolific." As funny and/or gross as you'd expect, but these simple, catchy Billy Joel-ish piano-driven songs are so obsessively single-minded in their examination of the more taboo aspects of human corporeality that it's kind of impressive. I almost feel like congratulations are in order. He seems to be a sane man, a regular guy, not someone you'd think were you to meet him on the street "Hey, now that's the kind of guy who would record 7 whole albums about bodily functions!"THE TOILET BOWL CLEANERS sampler01 Gotta Poop, Puke and Pee (Simultaneously) [Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee]02 Happy Mother's Day (Thanks For Wiping My Bum, Mum) [Holiday Poop Puke & Pee Songs]03 The Diarrhea Bounce Back [Still Farting, Pooping, Puking, and Peeing]04 Scarlet Johansson Farts [Celebrities Fart and Poop (Just Like You & Me)]05 I Pooped On Santa's Lap [Holiday Poop Puke & Pee Songs]06 The Defecation Song [Still Farting, Pooping, Puking, and Peeing]07 Swine Flu [I Love Poop!]08 Peeing In The Shower [Songs About Poop, Puke & Pee]09 Girls Don't Poop [I Love Poop!]10 Picking My Nose [Let's Not Forget Snot, Boogers & Ear Wax!]11 Taylor Lautner Poops [Famous People Fart & Poop]12 Wiping My Bum With My Hand [I Love Poop!]13 Bed Bugs [Let's Not Forget Snot, Boogers & Ear Wax!]14 Rudolph The Red-Nosed Hemorrhoid [Holiday Poop Puke & Pee Songs]15 Barack Obama Farts [Celebrities Fart and Poop (Just Like You & Me)]16 Everybody FartsAlbums also available thru CDBaby.
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January 27, 2013, 4:27 pm
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Lamanites? Is that what your kitchen counter is made of? No, silly, Lamanites are the original inhabitants of North America, according to the Book of Mormon, and since Mexicans and Polynesians are brown people like the Indians, they must all be related! Let's thrown them into the same category, make 'em wear Indian costumes, and sing cheery, cheezy, '70s variety show-type music! So someone thought at Utah's Brigham Young University, from whence this group comes.
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Lots of fun stuff on this album that Our Man in Salt Lake City, windy, sent our way. Just don't expect much in the way of ethnic authenticity. The low-budget lounge combo's instrumental backing and the singer's enthusiastic performances can get absurdly entertaining. I mean, check out the cat in the headdress to the left. That's gotta be the crooner swingin' his way thru "Navajo Baby." "The Mountains Cry Out," believe it or not, is practically surf music. And a song with a title like "The Big Mouth Frog" has got to be good, right? Right. Oddly, there's almost no overt religious content. Maybe they were hoping for a mainstream crossover a la The Osmonds.
The Lamanite Generation(Bless you, windy!)
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January 27, 2013, 4:32 pm
By request: the absolute wimpiest versions possible of classic rock hits, "Soft, Safe & Sanitized," is back on-line.
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January 29, 2013, 4:45 pm
Zoogz Toozday is back, for one post - a large collection of early recordings from the late Zappa/Beefheart-inspired bandleader-gone-punk/ comedian/ crank/ mad genius Zoogz Rift. We featured an album of Zoogz with his band The Amazing Shitheads every Tuesday for a while there, then super-awesome generous reader myxsoma laid some more on us, and, once again, he has gifted us with 3 bootlegs taken from cassettes of Zoogz and various enthusiastic cohorts chronicling his earliest recordings, some going all the way back to 1973: "The first two are apparently from his band "Zobus" which was his earlier band before the Shitheads." All 3 volumes contain text files with useful notes. Longtime sidemen Richie Hass (vibes) and Scott Colby (slide guitar) are featured. Sound quality varies, but is generally pretty good, considering.![]()
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February 1, 2013, 7:34 am
Back up, by request: Plus!
Zoogz Rift, "Torment," and "Idiots on the Miniature Golf Course."
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February 5, 2013, 4:50 pm
"Oh, the shark bitesWith his teeth, dearAnd he shows thempearly white..."Yeah, you know it, "Mack The Knife", #3 on Billboard's Top 100 Songs ever. You've heard it a million times, from Bobby Darin's #1 hit version in 1959, to countless crooners ever since. But who first recorded it?Feel free to smack the next smug twerp who tells you "Google is your friend." No, it's not, not always, and I couldn't find the answer to that question. I knew it was written by the great German composer/playwright/anti-capitalist team of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht back in 1927 for the musical "Threepenny Opera," but that's well known. Heck, that Weimer-era Berlin cabaret style is probably more popular now then it was in the 1920s. Tom Waits, Amanda Palmer, The Tiger Lillies, and numerous other alt/dark-cabaret performers owe much of their careers to it, and countless jazz, pop, and theater singers have been performing these songs for decades. (That's an original German 1929 poster to the right.)So you'd think the question of who made the first recording of "Mack The Knife" would be a pretty basic one. But it gets confusing early on. For one thing, the song wasn't even originally entitled "Mack The Knife." Nope, it was called "Moritat," a term from German folklore meaning a bad-man ballad, similar to Old Western songs about bandits and outlaws. It then became popularly known as "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (The Ballad of Mack the Knife)." In the Fifties, it finally became known as "Mack The Knife" when it was discovered by the American jazz and theater world. So who did it first? I went to the source, and asked the Kurt Weill Foundation, but even spokesperson Dave Stein isn't certain. He wrote me:"I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems pretty clear that the first recording of the "Moritat" was made in December 1928 by Harald Paulsen, who played Macheath in the original production of the Threepenny Opera. Brecht himself also recorded the song early on, but my sources say that was made a few months later, in May 1929. It's odd that the standard Brecht biographies and chronologies we have here seem to make no mention of this recording, which you would expect to be a little more noteworthy. Paulsen's recording is available on a recently reissued Capriccio 2-CD set"Die Dreigroschenoper: Historische Originalaufnahmen" (C 5061, reissued 2011, originally released on CD in 1990).I should point out that the "Moritat" was not the biggest hit from the show in Weimar Germany; it did not become the hit song from Threepenny until much later, when Louis Armstrong's 1955 recording paved the way for so many successors."Needless to say, Paulsen's and Brecht's versions sound little like the ones you know. With their German lyrics, oom-pah sound, and different vocal phrasing, they almost sound like different songs altogether. They do sound great, tho - I'd take Brechts' version over most of the later, more famous recordings.And then there's the matter of the lyrics. The famous versions from the '50s and afterwords usually use Marc Blitzstein's somewhat sanitized translation. The eye-opening original lyrics feature such lines as "And the minor-aged widow/ Whose name everyone knows/ Woke up and was violated/ Mack, what was your price?" Yikes, that's getting a bit rape-y, isn't it? Macheath wasn't just some loveable Rat-Pack type rogue, but a genuinely Bad Dude. In the eyes of Brecht and Weill, Mac was a symbol of unrestrained capitalism. This context disappeared, of course, after the off-Broadway revival of "Threepenny" in the late '50s became such a huge success using Blitzstein's translation. My mom even attended a performance! And I have a copy of the hit cast album, featuring a young pre-sitcom star Bea Aurthur, still then known as "Beatrice." Darin did his version based on the Blitzstein revival, and here we are.All of which got me thinking...I bet many of you remember the 1985 album "Lost In The Stars - the Music of Kurt Weill." With it's fresh re-workings of numerous Weill classics and it's all-star cast, it was pretty popular in the college/public radio scene of the '80s. I liked Slapp Happy/Henry Cow singer Dagmar Krause's track so much, I then bought her "Supply & Demand" German cabaret covers record. Producer Hal Wilner, on this and other albums he organized, actually made the dreaded 'tribute album' seem like a great idea."Lost In The Stars - the Music of Kurt Weill" I added the two previously-described earliest known versions of "Moritat" to the file. Get the artwork/liner notes to "Lost in The Stars" HERE.| 1. Mahagonny Songspiel (Intro) - Steve Weisberg |
| 2. 'The Ballad Of Mac The Knife' - Sting/Dominc Muldowney |
| 3. 'The Cannon Song' - Stan Ridgway, The Fowler Brothers [Bruce Fowler of Captain Beefheart's late-period Magic Band?] |
| 4. 'Ballad Of The Soldier's Wife' - Marianne Faithfull |
| 5. Johnny Johnson Medley - Van Dyke Parks |
| 6. The Great Hall - Henry Threadgill |
| 7. 'Alabama Song' - Ralph Schuckett, Richard Butler (of the Psychedelic Furs) |
| 8. 'Youkali Tango' - The Armadillo String Quartet |
| 9. 'The Little Lieutenant Of The Loving God' - John Zorn |
| 10. Johnny's Speech - Van Dyke Parks |
| 11. 'September Song' - Lou Reed |
| 12. 'Lost In The Stars' - Carla Bley |
| 13. 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?' - Tom Waits |
| 14. Klops Lied (Meatball Song) - Elliot Sharp |
| 15. 'Surabaya Johnny' - Dagmar Krause |
| 16. Oh Heavenly Salvation': Hurriccane Introduction - Mark Bingham & Aaron Neville |
| 17. Oh Heavenly Salvation: Oh Heavenly Salvation - Mark Bingham & Aaron Neville |
| 18. 'Call From The Grave/Ballad In Which Macheath Begs All Men For Forgiveness - Todd Rundgren |
| 19. 'Speak Low' - Charlie Haden |
20. 'In No Man's Land' - Van Dyke Parks
Oh, so how's Sting's version of "Moritat"? It's really good, except for the Sting part.
And if you like Tom Waits' take on "What Keeps Mankind Alive?," dig William Burroughs' version:
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February 8, 2013, 12:21 pm
- You got robots in my gamelan!- You got gamelan in my robots!Two great tastes that go great together: Gamelan Galak Tika (pronounced 'Galactica'?) & Ensemble Robot, from Boston's MIT and UMass, respectively, combine forces for 19 minutes of free awesomeness that you can download here:Gamelan Galak Tika & Ensemble Robot: Heavy MetalA few other instruments like violin and electric guitars join the machines and the Indonesian bells 'n' gongs are for a thoroughly mysterious and wonderful sandwich spread of rock 'n' roll, island exotica, and avant-garde. Now, with added chunks of sci-fi futurism! A combo this bizarre shouldn't exist. And yet it does:
If your taste in robots playing meatbag (human) music is a little more down-to-earth, check
a metal band - literally - whose videos show them jammin' on Motorhead, The Ramones, and AC/DC. They do live shows, and apparently an album is in the works.
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February 11, 2013, 10:33 am
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Everything's always "Hitler this, Hitler that." What about Mussolini, huh? He was a bloodthirsty dictator, too! And he was Hitler's bud, eventually overthrown and killed by his own Italian countrymen, they hated him so. Well, not all of them. Like whoever started the mussolinibenito.net site (sign their guestbook!). Quite a generous assortment of pro-Fascism/Il Duce mp3s are found on the site - mostly music, but some speeches ("discorsi") as well. The music seems to consist of upbeat marches and rousing sing-alongs, e.g. "Allarmi siam Fascisti," which translates to "At arms, Fascists!" It's the kind of pre-caffeine anthem you need on a Monday morning.
This article details Il Duce's love of music. He even played the fiddle.
CANZONI MP3 DELL' EPOCA FASCISTA - click on 'Canzoni MP3' in the left-hand columnThere are also some Irish rebel songs on the bottom of the page. I don't know why.
(I tried to add info to the mp3 tags of the songs I downloaded, like 'Mussolini songs' or something, but it wouldn't let me. It's locked, I guess. Buncha fascists...)
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February 14, 2013, 10:13 am
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Bashful Hips is a solo electro band from Colorado whose free download album "Divorce" consists of song after sound-alike song of mid-tempo slightly-distorted synth tunes, all sung in a woeful one-note drone. Tho there's some nice musical touches here and there, e.g. the popping percussion on "Color Me Blue," I can't really say it's a genuinely good album - the songwriting seems more like diary entries than lyrics, with scant attention paid to things like rhythm or rhymes. But it certainly seems heartfelt, packed as it is with excruciating details like "mornings are now so confusing/now that I don't get to awake to the sound of your hair dryer." Over the course of a whole album, tho, it almost becomes comical. The one-note singing makes the album seem like one long song. Strangely compelling.
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February 15, 2013, 11:25 am
Making music out of music is common currency now (not so much back when this blog was founded and mashups were regularly featured), so sound-collage music has to really blow my mind to get me to pay attention to it nowadays. ![]()
Chief blower-of-minds of late is "Border Towns," an album by one Nick Brooke, a young avant-composer whose new album on Innova mixes a vocal choir with a mad brew of samples ranging from field recordings, to music, to radio dj chatter. It's all meant to drop the listener into the US/Mexico border realms. The m.o. of this album actually reminds me of the KLF's classic "Chill Out," which mixed numerous samples with electronic music to create a theoretical late-night cross-country drive across the southern U.S. Good luck trying to chill out to this album, tho - it's varied, dynamic, exciting, and a lot of fun. The idea of a choir is an odd choice, but works a treat. Sometimes they don't even sing, but do things like recite radio I.D.s with a straight-face ("more music...mas musica!")Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us are old pros, the deans of the collage college, but for a recent project, the music is all played and sung live. "The Keystone Cut Ups" is a multi-media show featuring all found video footage from black-and-white silent movies, mashing the more self-consciously anarchic works of the Surrealists with early Hollywood comedies. Numerous antique songs are suggested, and blended with others, and with original songs. New lyrics are sometimes sung over old tunes. Ergo told me "The only sampled bits are the bits from the films that pop over. Vicki [aka People Like Us] also did quite a lot of sound-effects on it." Live mashups, beautifully played and crooned on banjos, accordions, etc. Magical. There is a DVD of the show out that's on the top of my wish-list. The album can be downloaded thruillegal-art.![]()
CutUp Sound is satirical sound-collage project only now coming to light, thanks to Rich at KillUglyRadio in Portland. He finally got his old pal Mr. CutupSound to go thru his tapes (some going perhaps as far back as the '80s) and put a career-spanning collection together. Lots of funny mass media/political/religious cut-ups in the Cassette Boy/Wayne Butane school of audio pranksterism, as well as some really impressive more musical tracks.And finally, a completely ridiculous good old-fashioned A+B mashup by newcomer The Don Music Show, from Wisconsin. There's probably no artistic justification for this nonsense - I just wanna hear it loud when it's late and I'm drunk.Sample-Music Sampler1. Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us - Orchestra2. CutupSound - It Is Called Radio3. CutupSound - Breakfast4. Nick Brooke - Del Rio5. Nick Brooke - Columbus6. The Don Music Sound - One Trek Beyond...P.S.: Tim from Radio Clash (aka Instamatic, DJ NoNo, etc) has been putting up his '90s works from the days before he became a founding father of the British mashup scene. His Reality Engine release has a strange, creepy, and sometimes funny late-night atmosphere to it, accurately described as "ambient tracks, noise, electronic toys, feedback, hum, cut-ups, found sound, radio scans and noises, interruptions, drones, test tones and squeaks..." A journey thru England's dark underworld, e.g.: this snatch of intercepted conversation: 'I have not slept with anybody else, apart from you, and obviously, my wife.'
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"Hello, my name is TD Cruze and I am a 20 year old hip-hop producer from Valdosta, Georgia.
Now THAT'S the kind of email I like to get. Hot damn! What a concept. And what an execution, too - only 6 songs, but a more utterly mental release you have not heard all year. You could even dance to it, although the idea of a club full of kids dancing to sampled animal sounds is too surreal to contemplate.
