| #598 |
|
2002 |
Perilous 598 If you are reading this then it means I’ve not been able to find (or maybe afford) internet access in the Bladerunner metropolis that is Tokyo. Or maybe I’ve been trampled by a horde stampeding the latest cute toy like the Kogepan, or the latest crazy teen fashion. So, consider this a stand-in column. Not that its necessarily sub-standard. Matthew Herbert is busily becoming one of the biggest and most interesting producers around. Even more adventurous is that his work ventures closer and closer towards ‘normal music’ – jazz standards, house – playing with their structures similar to the work fellow sound enthusiast Atom Heart has been doing with his latin pop and lounge transformations. Having rapidly ramped up his output in the last four years, the last six months have seen his wonderful Bodily Functions album and a conceptual Radioboy mini-album The Mechanics Of Destruction, and now this, a reasonably comprehensive remix anthology titled Secondhand Sounds, all be released. Secondhand Sounds is not only a reasonably comprehensive collection of the most familiar as well as a few less well known remixes, it is also good representation of how Herbert’s work has changed since his early releases as Wishmountain and his early house projects on the Phono label. As Herbert’s work has progressed he has become more and more interested in vocals, not so much for their lyrical content but for the sound of the words themselves, the ‘grain of voice’ or the sound texture. In his work with Dani Siciliano they manage to play with meanings by careful editing and chopping of syllables; and this same tendency appears in many of his remixes. Thus his signature reworking of Moloko’s hideous Sportsgirl house track, Sing It Back totally transforms the original with a simple less-is-more philosophy and a careful bit of syllable editing to change the wording of the repeated vocal line. Similarly, what starts as a lurching and jumpy cut & paste job on Two Banks Of Four’s soul/funk Street Lullaby soon builds its own rhythms from the sharp edges and the differing levels of background hiss left behind in each sample. Its all about appreciating the detail and playing with the form of the original – not completely destructing it – that makes Herbert’s work such an exciting listening experience. Back onto last fortnight’s subject of bootleg cutups, it appears that a reasonably well-known local figure has been making bootlegs that have been spreading to the rest of the world. Check out the work of Dsico and the fruits of his P2P trawls for acapellas at http://4trak.net/dsico. He’s assembled some quite hilarious overlays of Missy Elliott’s Ger Yr Freak On crossed with Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart and some others of note. Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears and Madison Avenue get the treatment too. Most interesting is his guide to making your own bootlegs with easy to find and use audio editors. Boom Selection, the UK site popular for its news archives of some of the best of the bootleg craze is at http://www.base58.com/booms/ and the excellent Specials vs Destiny’s Child done by Braces Tower is for download at http://spacetowns.com/bracestower/. Its a grand fad that is the result of too much cheap technology, an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop music (the best cutups are not always the silly ones), and probably the deathly lull in music at the moment. If we have to go back to pop music to go forward, is it really forward? Still its fun, check this stuff out in the few moments before it gets totally incorporated. If you hear any big name DJs playing them around town, run like hell, its all over then. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
Snarl Texts Index Pages
|