Vote For M4M Idol!!

Don't you wish all of those "[name of country] Idol"/"X Factor"-type shows had good music? Well, now here's your chance to be Simon Bowel (pictured left, on toast) - vote for any of the artists featured on this sampler of home-brew recordings. Most of these acts wrote to me asking for a review of their work, but, goshdurn it, I just don't have the time. Forgive me, bedroom maestros of the world.
But these are all FREE releases, so if you like the sampler tunes, there's often whole albums for you to download. It's really good stuff. I wouldn't subject you-all to anything I didn't genuinely enjoy, so it's gonna be a tough call. A real horse race.

How do you vote? Simply listen to the "M4M Idol" collection i posted below and then leave a comment stating who's your favorite artist of the bunch. The winning artist will get a full-length review (woo-hoo!) in a future M4M post. Yeah, I know...sorry I don't have any valuable cash prizes/record deals to offer the winners, but hey, I get hundreds (sometimes thousands) of eyeballs on this blog each day, so they are getting some exposure.

Musically, it's quite a variety show: lo-fi outsiderness, postpunk prog, campy surf, subversive sound collage, Afro grooviness, ambient/noise soundscapes, twisted electronica, some strange things resembling catchy pop songs. And then there's Jinnwoo's "Sorry Song" which "...was written as an apology from myself to the world for being such a bad and horrible creature...I recorded the piece naked, and in the rain." What would Paula Abdul think?

M4M Idol

1. Bloody Death Skull - I Miss My Homeland 2. Future's Lament 3. Holding Hands
4. Buttress O'Kneel - Exhibit W 5. Buttress O'Kneel - Darkness
6. Cutthroat convention - Warui Neko 7. Cutthroat convention - Parasite's Paradise
8. Death to the Brutes - Death Set 9. Death to the Brutes - No Love, No Ecstasy
10. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks - Phibes and Vulnavia, Just Married! 11. Die 1000 Wellen Das Dr Mabuse
12. Jinnwoo - Sorry Song
13. Marc Broude - For the Flies
14. Mike Colin - Fish Bulb 15. Mike Colin - The Future is Not Written
16. Moebius II - Innerstate '94 17. Moebius II - Magic Mirror
18. oreaganomics - Fallin Out Of Buildings Fallin In Love 19. Create Something to Love
20. Pompey - Bivouac Sack 21. Pompey - Candle
22. Sam Simmons - Midge
23. Skinjobs - Money in the Bank Vs. Money in the Pocket 24. Skinjobs - Sunshine

Remember, you can't complain about who won if you didn't vote!

IDIOTS

*sigh*

Got this email this morning, re: CCC's "Cracked Pepper" mashup album that I posted last week:

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright

Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the

copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status.

(If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement,

regardless of its merits...You may edit the post to remove the offending content

and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers

again.  



Blah blah blah, etc. etc.  As I wrote in my original post: You're not gonna find too many mashup albums better than

this 2007 release by the UK's CCC (aka   Chris Shaw) and his helper-pal Ill Chemist.  Don't know Mr. Chemist,   but

CCC is a true mash-master.  This release is a follow-up to his   tackling the entire "Revolver" album, and is worth a

listen even for   those (like me) who are long tired of hearing any more from those   mop-tops from Liverpool.

On a technical level, it's well produced,   on-time and in-key even as some tracks juggle as many as 10 songs in

one   track.  More importantly, imaginative touches abound: how did I never   notice that Lennon swiped the

melody of "For The Benefit For Mr. Kite"   from his earlier "It's Only Love"?  Well spotted, sirs.



Weirdly enough, before his mashup career, CCC started the Monkeyman superhero hoax. 



And if you want the album (I'M NOT HOSTING IT, NEVER DID) it's easy enough to just search for "mediafire" + "ccc

ill chemist cracked pepper," so I don't know what all this nonsense accomplishes.  Sorry, all of your original

comments are gone. 

Stairway to Gilligan's Island

To celebrate the legacy of the recently deceased Sherwood Schwartz, creator of a favorite childhood TV show of mine, "Gilligan's Island," here's another one of my childhood faves, the ingenious proto-mashup by a San Fran band, Little Roger and the Goosebumps:

"Gilligan's Island (Stairway)"



(Thanks to WFMU!)

R.I.P. Wild Man Fischer

Damn, we've been losing too many strange/outsider greats lately - in the last six months or so, Captain Beefheart, Zoogz Rift, and now Larry "Wild Man" Fischer have died. Fischer was the paranoid schizophrenic Frank Zappa introduced to the world in the late '60s when he discovered Larry walking down the Sunset Strip hollering his songs at the top of his lungs. He was 66, way too young, but he had heart problems, and a difficult life.

Fun-To-Know Fact: Rhino Record's first ever release was a single of Fischer bellowing out acapella "Go to Rhino Records/on Westwood Boulevard!" Apparently he used to hang around the now-closed store all day. Would there have been a Rhino label without Fischer?

PCL Linkdump has a great post: links to the documentary about Fischer that came out a few years ago, and two whole albums for your downloading pleasure, including an early Zappa-era one, "An Evening With Wild Man Fischer", and one recorded with Smegma in 1975 when those infamous crazies were still in Pasadena in the Los Angeles area before they absconded to Oregon. When I first wrote about this post, I said that the Smegma album "features a fantastic 15 minute destruction of Gladys Knight & The Pips' "Midnight Train to Georgia."


Here's a Wild Man Fischer mashup by RIAA from the "Schizophonia Suite" EP:

Kill Your Merry Go Round: featuring Wild Man Fischer's "Merry Go Round" and "The Wild Man Fischer Story," Lou Reed "Kill Your Sons" (inspired by Reed's teenage shock therapy treatments); C Dott "Merry Go Round"

Joy DIVAsion

I should hate this album, I really should. I bet a lot of people would if they heard it - it takes Joy Division instrumentals and mixes them with pop female vocals, and that's just plain sacrilege in some quarters. But, damn it, it pretty much works a treat. The final track with Diana Ross sounds out-of-key to my ears, but otherwise Ian Curtis' psychodrama supplanted by whiny pop tarts makes a surprising amount of sense, at least on a musical level. And, actually, some of these idiotic songs gain unexpected emotional heft as well, propelled by the passionate punk-derived instrumental tracks.

Sometimes the whole ridiculous-ness of it all makes it downright funny. And, you must admit, "funny" is not a word usually associated with Joy Division. Got to give The Netherland's mashup master Oki (who we previously featured HERE) credit for such audacity. Kill your idols!

Oki - Divas of Joy


oki - Love Will Crush Us Apart (Joy Division vs Paramore) - video by Instamatic from Tim Baker on Vimeo.

PEOPLE LIKE US: "Welcome Abroad"

We've been singing the praises of UK's master sound collagist People Like Us for ages, but she just might have released her best work yet. Well, actually the album "Welcome Abroad" won't be released for a month (thru illegal-art), but you can listen to it streaming

HERE

The 17-song collection sustains a marvelously trippy feel throughout, with hallucinogenic fragments of old easy-listening records melting and morphing into each other, even as kitsch-fests like "Happy Lost Songs" had me laffin'. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, songs like "Lost In The Dark" are genuinely moving. And "The Sound Of The End Of Music" proves just what I've always suspected: that The Doors weren't doing much more than playing corny showtunes.

The following artists are listed, but there's plenty more: The Beatles, Ennio Morricone, Danny Kaye, Bob Dylan, Rod McKuen, Elton John, Gene Pitney, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, John Denver, Julie London, and Queen. And the use of hissy old '78s is duly noted and appreciated.

RADIO MUSIC

You've heard music on the radio? How 'bout music from radio? Cage did it back in the '50s, and more recently, Chicago's Jeff Kolar has released a free on-line EP of music made from radio broadcasts. Kolar is an accomplished artist and conceptualist - I especially like the music for his Mahomet Aquifer Project - but for this project, he tells me: "...all material was generated and composed by/through the use of homemade radio receivers and transmitters. Within the pdf booklet there is a circuit diagram of the low-powered transmitter I designed. All analog material - no digital."

The first track is ambient static, eventually developing into more 'musical' tracks, including some amusingly kitschy old ads.

Other Voices

Coincidentally, I've been diggin' an album called "Radio" by Exile (no, not the guys who did that horrible '70s "Kiss You All Over" song) that is made entirely from Los Angeles radio. Excellent head-nodding avant-hip-hop that DJ Shadow wishes he made.

Exile "Frequency Modulation"

Exile "Love Line"

ALL RIGHTS REVERSED

The new Evolution Control Committee album, "All Rights Reserved," is a masterwork of hilarious sound collage and mashups, utilizing strange thrift-store records, ranting preachers, outsider music recordings, pop hits and boomin' beatz. Buy it, if you can find it. But whatever you do, do NOT listen to it:

"The lawyers had concerns," ECC's TradeMark Gunderson explains. ..."We thought the best solution would be a legal agreement that forbids anyone -- everyone -- from listening. Period."

(Don't listen to it HERE.)

'What Would You Think If I Sang AutoTune' = hilarious misuse of technology. 'Don't Let The Devil Blow Your Mind' kicks butt like prime Fatboy Slim or Chemical Brothers. 'Stairway to Britney' reminds you that ECC practically invented the mashup. 'Listener License Agreement Reminder' = even more hilariouser. 'California Dreamings' stitches a new version of a certain Mamas and Papas hit out of what must be every version of that oldie ever recorded - a helluva lot of work. The sampled voice of Luie Luie pops up, as does J & H Productions (already sampled by RIAA a few years ago!) And so on. Fun, fun stuff.

THIS GUY'S A REAL CUT-UP

I Cut People, the diabolical sound-smashers we first reviewed last year, have a NEW! FREE! download album constructed entirely out of Hollywood movie audio. In true film industry fashion, it's a sequel - last year's "The Inside Story" was a similar attack on Tinseltown, but, unlike most sequels, this one's a little better. It's more funny. Highlights include the title track's Mel Gibson-gone-insane collage, and "Be My Wingman" pulling all your favorite stars out of the closet. Trenchant commentary + laffs = my fave I Cut People release yet.

I Cut People "This Is Hollywood"

Vocal critics of the sound collage aesthetic like Steve Albini and Henry Rollins decry the artist's lack of traditional musical methods ("It's not real music!"). But they're missing a crucial point: the media has usually been a one-way avenue - they produce, we consume. This type of sound-collage (200 films were used, in this case) reverses that, chewing up and spitting all the endless hype back out. It's democracy in action, blowing past the gatekeepers, letting anyone with sound editing software in on the information highway. And besides, recycling all that media waste often results in something far more entertaining and profound than the original sources.

HEY KIDS, IT'S STORY TIME!

If 15 hours of Ergo Phizmiz's "Faust Cycle" still wasn't enough, and you've been seeking out even more eccentric British humor and surreal storytelling mixed with sample-based experimental music, look no further! Series One of

the Frunt Room

show is now up in it's 6-episode (roughly 2 hours) entirety. Members of long-time M4M faves Pilchard and The Who Boys are the humans behind these ongoing madcap misadventures of a robot-like couple. Episodes 3 & 4 are particularly hilarious.

Musically, expect an entertaining mix of '60s e-z kitsch, modern beatz, and oddballs of the Zappa/Residents variety.

Brent Wilcox was an early radio hero of mine. His KCRW show "F.R.G.K." ("Funny Rock God Knows") was as fearlessly weird as any I've heard. And he's finally put his own music on-line. The standout stuff for me is the two-part (roughly 38 minutes) "Pops Science Story," which was originally released on cassette in 1987.

It tells a mind-meltingly strange and funny story that could make for an especially freaky episode of "Fringe." Wilcox's musical backing is a low-techno stew of tape-loops and Casios and drum machines pushed to their limits. Brian Eno, no less, praised it.

The "Pops" Science Story - Part One (1987) by Brent Wilcox
The "Pops" Science Story - Part Two (1987) by Brent Wilcox

OBAMARAH

Don't know who this Radio Crack fella is, but he's got lots of media cut-ups/sound collages. And they don't get much funnier then this one, featuring the world's most powerful person. And Barack Obama.

Radio Crack: Obamarah

VULCAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS

Doesn't get much goofier then this: an entire album of grungy rock instrumentals with "vocals" courtesy of "Star Trek" dialogue samples.

Vulcan Freedom Fighters also throw in plenty of "Trek" sound effects. Each song seems to deal with one "Trek" episode at a time - the original series, of course. Although guitars dominate, occasional electronics pop in to give the album a fair amount of variety, from heavy metal to slightly chilled. Harmonica is used on the funny Old West-set "Horse-Stealin' Scurvy Crew." How Kirk and the gang ended up in the old West I do not know - haven't watched the show since childhood. But it's that kind of randomness that makes this album entertaining even (perhaps especially) to non-Trekkies.

Obviously this is part of the long tradition of "Trek" fan music, but the unique sample-based approach, and the whole pop-culture oddness of it all makes this one fan project that weirdo-music lovers in general can enjoy.

Pick hits: "Horta," whose chorus features Spock screaming "the pain!" "We Are The Metrons" had me banging my head and throwing up the Vulcan sign, not the devil horns. The sound-effects-laden (and possible pornographic) "Argelius" is pretty brilliant, too.

The entire album is available as a free download:

Vulcan Freedom Fighters

There isn't much biographical info on their site, but apparently they are a duo who have a Louisville, KY address, recorded the album in Barcelona, Spain and, judging by the pictures posted, they play (surprise!) conventions.

RIAA: "USA" - A Four Hour Long Mashup

Mash-mavens RIAA present "USA": "a four-hour-long "mix-album," conveniently divided into 10 separate mixes. The history, geography, culture, and politics of the United States are all fair game for RIAA's musical collages, incisive observations, and cheap jokes."
Literally hundreds of sources were used. Any audio that has anything to do with the U.S. of A., from old educational records found in thrift stores, to today's tv hosts and talk-show ranters, were beat-matched, pitch-corrected and thrown into the mix.

Every section delves into a different area of the America experience - the concepts of freedom and revolution, the historical aspects of the black experience and Western expansion, war, leisure time, and as many examples of American music as you're going to hear in one mix - from Native American Indian chanting to a myriad of folk styles, right up to punk and hip-hop. And you'll hear plenty of offensive kooks like Klansmen and religious bigots. But, hey, it's a portrait: "...A surreal, fun-house mirror portrait perhaps, but nonetheless, I wanted to just let everyone speak for themselves."

You can listen it streaming, download each of the 10 sections individually, or, if you plan on burning it to cds, download four cd-length zip folders:

RIAA: "USA"

UPDATE 8-1-10: A separate collection of 18 radio-friendly "singles" in now available.

And it's all free! Gosh bless America.

THE POLITICS OF DANCING

Some really, really bad songs featuring politicians singing, rapping, playing instruments, or song writing... some really, really funny songs about (or, better yet, sampling the voices of) politicians...and Bill Clinton's brother...

We go from America to the UK, Australia, Austria, Afghanistan...All posted here over the years, all knocked off-line in my Great Computer Meltdown of 2010, all thrown into one zip folder so I don't have to re-up 'em all one by one.

THE POLITICS OF DANCING

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger - It's Raining Men
2. Bill Clinton - Summertime
3. BudtheWeiser - Blair Drinks A Rockit
4. Burka Band - Burka Blue
5. FEMA - For Kidz Rap
6. George W Bush Singers - Embetterment Ingrinable
7. Winston Churchill and the Band from the Future - Lift Up Your Hearts
8. HC Strache - Oesterreich Zuerst
9. John Ashcroft - Let The Eagle Soar
10. Larry Shannon Hargrove - Leave Bill Clinton Alone
11. Orrin Hatch - The Country of the Free
12. Phil Kline - Rumsfeld Song
13. RIAA - Wake Me Up When Sept 11 Ends
14. Roger Clinton - Brother Brother
15. rx - dick is a killer
16. rx - imagine a walk on the wild side
17. Gene Marshall - God Bless Richard Nixon [song-poems]
18. Gene Marshall - Hail The Chief
19. Gene Marshall - President Richard Nixon
20. Gene Marshall - Richard Nixon In '76
21. Gene Marshall - The Great Richard Nixon
22. Wax Audio - You Better Run You Better Take Cover

MID-YEAR MASHUP MARATHON: 2010

We're stretching the definition of "mashups" here to include any kind of radical sound-collage craziness. Some brilliant free download-able stuff that's been blowing my mind lately:

Orange County, CA's Voicedude has been a music pro for over 20 years, doing everything from radio production to music theater. And it's all been leading up to this:

"Mashin' Jackson: The Untold Story" (alternate link) is not just a collection of MJ mashups, it's a "Spinal Tap"-like mock-umentary of Jacko's life, with hysterical narration between the songs. A "BBC 9" special (complete with radio jingle and announcer) describe MJ's shocking life and career dating back to the '50s. Yep, turns out he was well into his 70s when he died and had done secret collaborations with everyone from Elvis to Nirvana.

It's hilarious, and insanely clever, but it's so professional-sounding that it could convince the gullible.

"Motown Meltdown 2" also features Michael Jackson, but this mash-terpiece by San Fran's Gigante Sound posse slices 'n' dices its Motown (and only Motown) sources sometimes beyond recognition. The results include: groovy go-go beats, insane glitchy cut-ups a la John Oswald, ambient dronescapes...

The Symphony of Science is collection of six songs (with more on the way) and videos that sample the voices of scientists like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking from documentaries, using the Melodyne software to literally make these voices sing. Science and art occupy two very different places in our brain, one all logic and literal, the other intuitive and metaphoric, thus making it difficult to combine the two. But TSOS wisely opts for the poetic view of science, emphasizing the grandeur of the universe and the inspirational nature of man's struggles and accomplishments over nuts-and-bolts facts and figures.

Tho some will no doubt find the idea of Carl Sagan "singing" along with New Age-y electro-beatz to be some kind of weird high-minded kitsch, I think we're seeing the beginnings of a new era in musique concrete, where, with the help of software programs like Autotune and Melodyne, we can use non-musical sounds and speeches to make actual songs and melodies, not just abstract "art" music. I predict!

People Like Us and Wobbly (from the UK and San Fran, respectively) have a new collaborative album called "Music For The Fire" that is "a plunderphonic concept album depicting the lifespan of a relationship, as told through samples of hundreds of different songs and voices who had no idea they were all telling the same story until they were all spliced together." With many mashups, I think half way thru the song, "Okay, I get the idea." With these dense (tho sometimes humorous) collages, I find myself thinking after a track ends, "What just happened here?" and play it again.

You can buy it off the People Like Us site, or download it from illegalart using their "pay what you like" model.

SOUL SURFIN'

Here's a collection of '60s surf rock by black artists, more recent reggae songs about surfing, a tongue-in-cheek '80 New Wave song (the Bus Boys) and some mashups pitting black singers against surf instrumentals. And one rap song.

The Black Surfing Association has only a handful of members now - during the '60s surf music craze, there were no doubt even fewer black surfers, especially in the days of segregated beaches. So why would black musicians make surf music? For money of course. As with the "Surfin With Bo Diddley" album I posted a few days ago, record companies were looking to jump on any profitable trend. The reggae songs, tho, might be more of a sincere nod to their large surfer fan base. Ernest Ranglin's song "Reminiscing" is indeed reminiscent of the '60s classic "Theme From Endless Summer" by the Sandals.

All these tunes are high-energy summer fun, but some work better then others. The Isley Brothers' "Surf and Shout" and Chubby Checker's "Let's Surf Again" merely re-write old hits. And Diana Ross and The Supremes' "Surfer Boy" is really unbelievable - can you imagine Miss Thing on a dirty beach in those gowns? With that hair? Surfer, please!

Soul Surfin'

- Let's Go to the Beach 2:06 Sanford and the Sandies
- Surf Party 2:26 Chubby Checker
- Surf and shout 2:28 Isley Brothers
- Summertime Is Surfin Time 2:09 Surf Bunnies
- What'd The Bulldog Say 3:10 Zoom (Ray Charles vs The Ventures)
- Surfer Boy 2:26 The Supremes
- Soul Surfing 3:34 The Bus Boys
- Surfbusters 2:58 G3RSt (Ray Parker Jr vs The Tornadoes)
- Wipeout Taffy 3:29 Party Ben (The Surfaris vs D4L)
- (We're Gone) Surfin' 2:05 Chubby Checker
- I Like Nitro 2:39 JetSetAlex (Reel2Reel vs Dick Dale)
- Surfin' 4:57 Israel Vibration
- Mama Nature 4:30 Pato Baton
- California Girls (Crenshaw Blvd. Mix - Extended Remix) 6:11 The Cally Boys
- Surf Trick 2:10 RIAA (Kelis vs The Phantom Surfers)
- Dizz And The Boyz Getz To The Beach 2:42 MadMixMustang (Dizzy Gillespie vs Beach Boys)
- Reminiscing 4:38 Ernest Ranglin
- Let's Surf Again 2:08 Chubby Checker

There actually have been a couple hip-hop/surf cross-over hits (not included here cuz you can get 'em anywhere). The Black Eyed Peas "Pump It" takes a page from the MC Hammer hack songcraft playbook: 1) take the most obvious cliche song (Dick Dale's "Miserlou" in this case) 2) don't sample it so much as take pretty much the whole song 3) put a beat over it 4) shout a catch phrase over the music. Witless, but hey, it is "Miserlou," hard to ruin that one, so if I have to listen to Top 40, I'll take it. And in the '80s the Fat Boy's remade "Wipeout." The lovable lard-asses hooked up with the unloveable Mike Love's pseudo-Beach Boys to produce not only a jaw-droppingly kitschy video but a Top 40 hit.

THE WORLD'S LONGEST ALBUM?!

We've been writing about British nutter Ergo Phizmiz for a while now, but he's outdone himself this time. Actually, he's outdone everyone. Presenting a 15-hour long project, which you can listen to or download for free here:

The Faust Cycle or, The House of Dr Faustus
He mixes radio-drama surrealism with antique-garde mashups and experimental music, and except for a prolonged noise/tuneless whistling stretch in the middle of part one, I was pretty much entertained throughout. Yes, I've listened to the whole thing, and then some. As the man says:

"One afternoon Ergo Phizmiz finds himself lumbered into delivering a parcel to the house of legendary alchemist and necromancer Dr Johann Faustus who, since the events of some time ago for which he is renowned, has entered into a rather quieter life in a vast, labyrinthine house, with hundreds of lodgers running the gamut from artists, birds, bird-people, walking fictions, ventriloquists, a Cassowary, running chairs, walking gramophones, and myriad automata.

This enormous dream fable, told through speech, songs, collage and sound-design, is the result of over three years delving down various rabbit-holes, and features collaborations in a range of contexts with artists of many disciplines...
In glorious radiophonic technicolour, it is a musical-comedy of disorientation and magick, somewhere between nightmare and the half-remembered childhood whimsy of an insomniac music-hall artiste."

Spectacular projects like this and Wax Audio's "Nine Countries" are further evidence that, despite mass media/entertainment industry indifference, the internet is on the cutting edge of culture. It's not just a bunch of kids posting LOL-cat pictures. Maybe historians will figure that out one day...

ALBUM DU JOUR #6: Off The Beaten Meter

Just released today is a wonderfully insane collection of mashups from an international assortment of dj/producers that have one thing in common - none of the tracks are in 4/4 time. Now this old-skool punk-rocker can have highly allergic reactions to prog, especially the Rush/Yes variety, but I found this collection to be more fun then a barrel of metronomes. It's quite a break from the usual stuff, and makes me realize how formulaic so much music is (even "strange" music).

Off The Beaten Meter

Classical musics from Ravel to Philip Glass, jazz ("Take Five," natch), William Burroughs and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, yes, prog, get expertly mixed with disposable pop crap and electronica to sometimes head-spinning effect, all thanks to compiler DJ Not-I, an American now living in Austria. Many of my fave mashup-ers are on here, inc. G3rst, Virtual DJ (both Dutchmen, I believe), France's Totom, and Orange County, CA's Voicedude. (Oh, and I may have had something to do with one of the songs, but don't hold that against this album!)

ALBUM DU JOUR #4: Jim Fassett "Hear the Animals Sing"

SpaceAgePop sez: "Jim Fassett will be remembered by space age pop fans for one amazing piece of work: his 1960 Columbia album, Symphony of the Birds. Working with CBS radio technician Mortimer Goldberg, Fassett painstakingly pieced together fragments from recordings of bird calls originally made in the field...By rerecording some of them faster or slower and then superimposing multiple playbacks onto one tape, Fassett and Goldberg wove together the results like an arrangement for symphony orchestra." (An excerpt from can be heard HERE). This one is clearly made using the same technique as Symphony of the Birds, with actual recordings of animals being made to "sing" popular songs. But this album has a child narrator, and undeniable sexual innuendos, which will have you laughing, cringing, or both.

Jim Fassett "Hear the Animals Sing"

It's one 15 minute long file - side two was just "other animal songs" that is, routine kiddie stuff. 

UPDATE 4/15/14: Fassett used his long-running CBS radio show as a springboard for his sonic experiments, some of which were collected on his album "Strange To Your Ears," which you can now get on Amazon or itunes.

SPAGHETTI STRANGENESS

A few fascinating artists from Italy have recently come to my attention. Coincidence? Or is there a new Italian Renaissance going on?

k-conjog have a new album entitled "Il Nuovo è al Passo Coi Tempi" that I've really been diggin' lately. The tunes range from surf twang reminiscent of his countryman Ennio Morricone to a sad, lovely waltz for ukulele and cello sounds, but the album's bread and butter are funky kooky collages, often with child-like animal themes, that should go over well with any Bran Flakes or People Like Us fans, e.g. this super fun bit of cartoon craziness. Attention all dogs!

k-conjog: Attenti al Cani

§ (I think this is pronounced "section"), on the other hand, have a new three-song collection of beatless electronics + guitar instros that are as intense as k-conjog is whimsical. Imagine an Eno/Fripp project shot full of adrenaline.

§ - C02

I was hoping that Maciste would be more antique-garde then the almost-ska/rock that they are (needs more accordian!), but their circus-like horn-y sound does remind me that they are from the land of Fellini and Nino Rota. Which makes me wonder: why aren't there more Fellini-esque acts out of Italia? (Or are there?)