STOLEN SOUNDS pt 2

More music made out of other peoples' music:

Was very happy to see that Martinibomb's oldies from 1998-2004 are now collected onto one big name-your-price album. All kinds of lovely snippets of groovy '60s bossa/lounge/surf-a go-go sounds get sampled, with modern beatz tying it all together. Faves include the Bollywood-meets-bubblegum "Dizzy Ke Peeche" (a staple at my mashup DJ sets), and the self-explanatory "Munster Beat." And anyone who samples Don Knotts (as in "The Love God") automatically gets on my good side.  

Martinibomb "A Girls Bike"

But wait! There's more! A new-ish 3 song release shows them back at their game, e.g.: the zesty Latin title track:

Martinibomb "Mambossa Fever"
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Michael Intergalaxon's "The Art of Bird Mutation" crams 27 tracks in just over 30 minutes. It's a highly caffeinated rush of guitar metal, electro beatz, and corny pop crap, married at gunpoint and spinning at 100 rpm, until it flies apart and audio shrapnel goes whizzing past your ear. Some samples are only seconds long, if not shorter, reminiscent of John Oswald's "Plexure" - that is, if Oswald was a teen-age headbanger abusing his medications.

Michael Intergalaxon "The Art of Bird Mutation"
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Also from the Mutantswing posse is a split release featuring 20 minutes of entertaining insanity from Mythoklash (the second half of the album, by Unimates, is unremarkable techno disco). Mutantswing has many other releases that I haven't had a chance to check out yet. Maniacs!  Investigate and report.

"Classic Sounds Of The New Post-Avant-Garde" Pressed for time? Try out the 1:20 track "The Measurement Problem"
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And finally, this oddity from BOK Darkord (the BOK in question is Buttress O'Kneel) crafting an entire album out of Metallica and Lou Reed samples, but nothing from the actual Reed/Metallica collaboration "Lulu."

BOK Darkord "Lulu"

Don't know much about Metallica, but I recognized Lou's "Dirty Blvd" in "The View," "Heroin" in "Iced Honey", and "Sweet Jane" in "Frustration." "Little Dog" seems to feature not Reed music, but an interview with him, dropping bon mots like 'I hate journalists.' Have no idea what the sources are for "Dragon" but it's excellent lo-key creepiness.

Stolen Sounds pt1

New on-line releases that make music out of other peoples' music:

- People Like Us' newest album "Don't Think Right, It's All Twice" continues the prolific audio-collage queen's string of super-swell sample-sourced sounds. This time out, she actually uses lots of "classic rock" and familiar soul oldies, instead of her usual obscure charity-shop polka records, ethnic obscurities, and radio chatter. It has a nice, low-key feel to it. Restraint - uh oh, this isn't a sign of maturity, is it!? I'm not complaining - this is state-of-the-art sonic thievery. Get it. Listen to:

 Music Sounds Better With Me [Velvet Underground-Otis-Doors/David Lee Roth vs "Disco Inferno" + a bit of Beatles]

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But if it is audio whoopee- cushions you want, check out:

- Roger Species "Never Tickle A Sleeping Strawberry"

for krude komedy kut-ups a la Wayne Butane or Cassetteboy. Only not nearly as good.  Still, there are so few people making these kinds of stupid-joke collages that I feel I should give the guy a mention. Even if taking a media figure saying the word "country" and cutting off the last syllable gets old after the 100th time, there's still some good stuff here. Try tracks #4, 7, and 11. And 23 for some nice gabber/yodeling.
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Back to the really good stuff:

- ZootBoot vol.2 is described as "16 new mashups and remixes with pre-1950 sources." Mashup-masters like Pilchard, pomDeter, G3rst, oki and DJ Useo do a great job of mixing old jazz, big-band, etc with more modern sounds. It's the bee's knees, kiddo.

 
 

CLIFFIE STONE "COOL COWBOY"

("Better Than The Beatles" is back on-line)

As a companion piece to the "How The West Was Swung" album by Vegas crooner Pete Brady that we posted here a few days ago, here's another unlikely cowboy/modern jazz combination collection. Some of the same Western standards that Brady interpreted are featured here, as well. But this one comes from the other side of the fence: Cliffie Stone wasn't a Rat Packer heading out west like Brady, but a major country music figure (Capital Records A&R man, radio and tv host, and some recording success as well) putting down his lariat, and picking up a martini glass. 

This album is fun one, but it's def not as hip as "How The West Was Swung" - the jazz on songs like "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" is more Dixieland than bebop, and the vocals are by a pretty white-bread co-ed vocal choir. Still, Stone's take on The Sons of The Pioneers classic "Cool Water" swings like a rusty saloon door, dad. And dig the nutty cha-cha version of "Don't Fence Me In."
Better yet are the originals, like the title song, a hysterical number about a cowboy so cool, he'll "build a dude ranch on the moon." The like-minded "Cool Cow Boogie," concerns a hep-cat who's "got a knocked-out western accent with a Harlem touch."

CLIFFIE STONE "COOL COWBOY"

1 Cool Cowboy
2 The Streets of Laredo
3 Don't Fence Me In Cha-Cha
4 Tumblin Tumbleweeds
5 Cool Cow Boogie
6 High Noon
7 Jingle Jangle Jingle
8 Blood On The Saddle
9 Along The Navajo Trail
10 Cool Water
11 Sierra Sue
12 Ragtime Cowboy Joe

Muppet Christ Superstar

Finally!  "Jesus Christ Superstar" the way it was meant to be done: with Muppets.  Not "real" Muppets. But mock-Muppets are better than none at all, no?

Muppet Christ Superstar

Happy Jesus Zombie Day, everybody!

PETE BRADY - "How The West Was Swung"

Does what it says on the tin: "The Best of the West Done With A Swingin' Beat." This 1962 album, one of the few recorded by lounge crooner Pete Brady before an errant tennis racket damaged his throat, is more fun than a brawl in a saloon. Big, brassy orchestrations (by an uncredited Bob Florence) featuring members of Woody Herman's Thundering Herd thunder their way thru classic cowboy songs.  Very rural songs given a hip urban twist makes for a pretty ridiculous combo, but one that, strangely enough, was not uncommon. Why? A couple guesses: anything western was very popular at the time. Shows set in the Old West were as ubiquitous on mid-century TV sets as detective programs are now.  And swinger-central Las Vegas was still, in the '50s/early '60s, not too far removed from it's Wild West past.  Many early hotels and casinos had a western theme.

In any case, you'll chortle with glee blasting such kooky finger-snappin' remakes of the likes of "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds" and "I'm An Old Cowhand." And any version of Roy Rogers' ode to my homeland, "The San Fernando Valley," is always welcome. A tip o' the hat to Windy for this one.

PETE BRADY - "How The West Was Swung"

Re-Post: "Hear The Animals Sing"

Following on the heals of yesterdays' "Barnyard Beat" album of animals "singing" via modern sampling, here's a re-up request for the '50s equivalent: Jim Fassett's tape concrete work for children:

"Hear The Animals Sing"

"Barnyard Beat" may have the modern technology, but it doesn't have the perverted innuendo of this album...

Barnyard Beat: Livestock Rock And Jungle Jams

Musique concrete for pre-schoolers: this 1995 release on the Kid Rhino label takes played-out wedding-dj oldies, and thru the Space-Age miracle of sampling, replaces the lead vocals with animal sounds. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what is meant by "avant-'tard." Despite using the same techniques as the likes of Pierre Henry and John Cage, it will never be listed in the history books along with them, no matter how well it's done. File under "Childrens/novelty" and dump in the bargain bin (where I picked it up for a couple bucks). Ah, but we know the score, don't we, dear maniacs?

It's all more clever than it needs to be. Sonic puns abound, as when owls sing The Who's "We're Not Gonna Take It" - get it: The Whoooo?; and sheep "sing" the Beach Boy's "Barbara Ann" as "Baaahrbara Ann." The sampled birds (not lions) on the version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is a really impressive work of cut-n-paste. Great job, guys - both me and my 4-year-old appreciate it.

Barnyard Beat: Livestock Rock And Jungle Jams

1. Born To Be Wild - Chicken Wolf

2. Beat It - Mew Kids On The Block

3. Honky Tonk Women - The Old Geesers

4. The Lion Sleeps Tonight - Lion L. Richie

5. Barbara Ann - Ewe 2

6. I Got You (I Feel Good) - Sealy Dan

7. Conga - Simian Sound Machine

8. Wipe Out - Duck Dale And The Pig Tunes

9. Wild Thing - The Red Hot Chili Dogs

10. We're Not Gonna Take It - The Hoooes

11. The Lonely Bull - Cuds N Roses

12. Barnyard Medley - The Animals

"Hurray, The Rattles Are Here!"

At first (and second, and third) listen, Germany's The Rattles sound like a Beatles clone. And a particularly bizarre and hilarious one, at that. But as our man in Scotland, Count Otto Black, points out: "German beat groups like the Rattles weren't necessarily imitating the Beatles as such. Rather, the Merseybeat sound in general was extremely popular in Germany, and the Beatles were hired to play in Hamburg for that reason. So both the Beatles and the Rattles were trying to jump on the same bandwagon independently of one another. Though of course the Beatles always had a big advantage in that their accents never slipped. It appears that the Rattles already sounded as though they were a deliberate Beatles clone long before the Beatles were famous enough to be worth ripping off...the Beatles were but one of many similar groups, only they happened to have that extra something. Or maybe they just got lucky - most of their rivals made no recordings so we'll never know."

By the time of this 1965 recording, The Beatles were of course well established, and at least one song, "A Lonely Man," strongly suggests "She's A Woman," so maybe they had circled all the way around to intentionally imitating the Beatles. Still, there are some pretty deranged moments here that should clue anyone in that we are most def not dealing with those mop-tops from Liverpool: a version of Doris Day's wistful  ballad "Que Sera Sera" performed like a live mashup with "La Bamba," a highly energetic Bing Crosby (?!) cover, "Swinging On A Star", and a version of "Rockin' Pneumonia" that they pronounce "Rockin' Pumonia." But amidst all the unintentional laffs, there's still plenty of genuinely high-energy good rockin' tonight.

Die Rattles - "Hurra Die Rattles Kommen!"

A1	Come On And Sing
A2	It's My Fault [raunchy Bo Diddley-ish garage stomper]
A3	A Lonely Man
A4	No, No [what are they singing about?!]
A5	She Is The One
A6	I'm Coming Home
A7	Dance
B1	Que Sera
B2	Hold Me
B3	Swinging' On A Star
B4	Dr. Casey [an ode to fictional TV doctor Ben Casey]
B5	If You Don't Come Back
B6	Little Queeny
B7	Rockin Pneumonia

Thanks to His Countship!

Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra: "Experiments with Auto-Croon"

("Better Than the Beatles" is back on-line.)

Ira Robbin's Trouser Press review of The Bonzo Dog Band begins with an excellent examination of the nature of absurdity in music, an essay equally applicable to San Diego's mad genius(es) the Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, who finally have a new album, "Experiments with Auto-Croon," just released this past April Fools Day, appropriately enough. I can't think of anyone else currently operating who can successfully navigate such tricky Dada-humor waters as this band. Who else would make their debut album a 5-disk set?

As Robbins admits in his review, absurdity is not for everybody. Most people would probably listen to this album and think: why am I listening to an out-of-key robot singing nonsense over rinky-dink electronica? Well, apart from the catchy tunes, there's also the fact that a song about kid volleyball players who "all become mummies/ for no specific reason" (a song called, naturally, "Volleyball Mummies") is really funny. Okay, it makes me laugh. There's no obvious humor here, no set-up/punchline. This could all easily end up dumb, juvenile, trying too hard to be "wacky!" but it's not. It's droll, deadpan, and just plain weird.

For example: This song asks and answers the question, why are there no mime detectives?

Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra: "Mime Detective"  - and dig that toy piano.

The simple, if quirky, electronic pop formula hasn't changed, but it still veers into new territory like the danceable '60s soul organ of "Stunt Double Shuffle," (tho any DJ who spins it risks his job), and the Martin Denny-like exotica "God of Cocktail Umbrellas," in which we learn that the job of those little umbrellas in your cocktail is to keep the drink from getting wet.  Because who wants a soggy drink?

Also included: two tracks from the now off-line "Name That Tune" cover song quiz: Bon Jovi, and a spiritual ancestor of the Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra: Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." Visit:

http://www.satanicpuppeteer.com/

Listen to the whole album streaming HERE.


 

ODD-STRALIA pt 3: The Invented Instruments of Rod Cooper

Another strange-music-making Australian ("odd-stray-alien," as our expert in such matters Buttress O'Kneel says) is the chap in the above video, Rod Cooper, a metal-worker who makes fantastic plunky/boingy/screechy hand-built metal instruments. Seeing him live would be the optimal way to experience him, I would imagine, considering how, to quote B'O'K: "he used to play in subterranean stormwater drains and stuff, secret illegal gigs that utilised the tunnels' natural reverb to the fullest." And of course, you'd get to see these gizmos up close.

He has a few albums for sale, but here's one you can listen to via Bandcamp as Klunk, a duo with John Bell on vibraphone and percussion:

Klunk: "Metalic"

Many of these improvised instrumentals are nice indeed, with Cooper coaxing all kinds of atmospheric, almost ambient soundscapes out of his Highly Resonant Object. No harsh industrial pounding here. The interplay between vibes and HRO on "Aluminum" is quite lovely, and the dramatic "Columbium" is compelling.  I love jazz vibes, but on some tracks the aimless wandering vibraphone doesn't do much for me. Tracks like the sparse, haunting "Stainless" are more successful.

Here are two samplers, both almost 6 minutes long:

http://www.divshare.com/download/25367194-1bb

http://www.divshare.com/download/25367195-e86

And then there's:

Interview

Artist Statement - Like the man says: "Comfort Through Dissonance"