Sampling Ouroboros

The Typing Monkey un-ironically, well, and sometime fully ironically, grouses about the Web/internet all the time. But as a communication medium, it does many wonderful things.

Case in point: We listened to the song "Loose Booty" by Sly & the Family Stone this morning. Not because we're awesome, but because it was the subject of the most recent Hear This column at the AV Club.

Hear This can be a real treat when it does something like it did with the entry concerning "Loose Booty" -- that being, make the reader aware of a lesser-known song from an otherwise well-known artist. And in this case, it was in service of showing off something else that modern technology has enabled: Finding great music by sample-sourcing.

"Loose Booty" was used as the basis for The Beastie Boys' tune "Shadrach" from their sophomore album, Paul's Boutique, a real piñata of an album for sample-geeks. One read of the liner notes to that could start an expensive crate-digging habit.

We've always called that game "Spot the Sample" but the point is the same: You hear hip-hop music with samples, and you see if you can figure out what the source material for the sample is. Alternately you read the liner notes (or cheat via Who Sampled Who) and go find that music.

The result is, you pride yourself on your vast knowledge, and equally vast music collection, or you discover something new, and enjoy that new find. So shake your cane at those damn kids all you want, a portion of the hip-hop audience will always care enough to seek out the music that inspired or contributed to what they're listening to.

Which brings us to this:


If you haven't already seen this, or haven't already pressed play, it's a terrific and infectiously fun breakdown of another Paul's Boutique cut, "Shake Your Rump." One song, many samples, all of them neatly pointed out for you by a man who took the time to make this because he wants to turn you on to more good music.

And we wouldn't have seen this without a quick scan of the comments on the Hear This column, where a link to this video was posted by both Quirinus and D_Boons_Ghost, two people we'll likely never meet.

Let's crowd-source world peace, man.

Let's Get Weird

Black Heel Marks' debut long player Feel Free will be available for purchase on June 25. In the meantime, stream the whole thing here.

Ladies of Sport and a Love Letter to Disco

The real story here is that Typing Monkey publisher S.L. Kreighton has joined Twitter. Please, just ... you don't know what the past week has been like. He reads and chuckles all day, mumbling about Drunk Hulk and Snake & Bacon.

However, he has shared a few items of value with us and we would bebad friends if we didnt' share the following link with you:

 

http://worldinsport.com/2010/11/sportswomen-of-past-homage-with-vintage-html/

It's U.S. Library of Congress photos of Victorian era (and just beyond) women who played sports -- in full Victorian dress. You'll see the Bennett Sisters and many others.

***

In the interest of variety, we also highly recommend reading Dorian Lynksey's convincing argument from The Guardian, asserting that disco lives on in the form of most modern pop music. "Long Live Disco" will either make you nod in agreement or hassle the person sitting next to you with your counter argument. You will lose.



[Photo: Detail from "Miss Isabel Tennant"]

Getting Instrumental, Part III

THIS IS THE END MY FRIEND

These final two reviews in this series essentially ignore the rules laid out by the title of the feature, but just a little bit.

WOOLFY VS. PROJECTIONS
The Astral Projections of Starlight
(Permanent Vacation)
In the 1990s this would have been alternately derided and embraced as boutique music -- that broadly defined electronic music that included other vaporous genres such as downtempo, chillout (shudder) and lounge. A programmed bass foundation, muted beats and swells of synth chords make good on the vaguely new-age/prog look of the cover art and album title. But the Fender Rhodes, occasional Euro-soul vocals and one-chord vamp guitar (heavy on the wah-wah pedal) gives Astral Projections just enough urban soul to make the rotation at a swanky clothing store. Contextually, pills and thrills from the night before hurls many club kids into the arms of this sort of come-down music. For the rest of us, the impression fades as quickly as the ink-stamp on our wrists. However, "Neeve" feels distinctly like a minimalist variation on The Rolling Stones' "Miss You." Weird, huh?

Reference materials: Both Woolfy and Projections serve in the Los Angeles soul-funk collective Orgone. So if the cosmic sounds of Astral Projections feels too scrubbed, Orgone is messier and more immediate.



CIRCLE RESEARCH
Who?
(Melting Pot Music)
Two Canadians take the Beat Konducta/Donuts style of public audition/audio sketchbook to a logical hip-hop-will-eat-itself conclusion. The snake has eaten its tail, and said tail is delicous. But where Madlib, J Dilla (and Oh No, and so many others) have dipped deep into their record collections for source material, Astro and Nik T, the duo comprising Circle Research, mined the major hits of hip-hop's Golden Age. So instead of sending the heads scrambling to find out which obscure jazz break these men looped, they're letting nearly everybody play "name the sampled sample." Clipping Biz Markie's shocked declaration from "Just a Friend" to make the track "Oh Snap!" barely scratches the surface of how Who? works. Yes, these 36 mini-tracks are pieced together from some of the most recognizable rap hits of the late '80s and early '90s, but they didn't just grab the hooks or make a stunted mixtape. Call it micro-remixing.


Reference material: Circle Research might be too heady for dance-ready fans of Girl Talk's extended mash-ups. Anyone who gobbles up Madlib's Beat Konducta volumes, or MF DOOM's Special Herbs series will find much to ingest here.

WWDOOSV (Part IV)

sub-ID
BFF
(1320)
Semi-improvised experimental electronic duo. If reading that phrase caused involuntary eye-rolling, please stop reading and scroll on to the next item, or click on one of the "Monkey Love" links and forget this ever happened.

BFF has nine tracks of stuttering drum machines with flighty programming that halts most of the fluidity of what might have been electronic funk, and tosses in some organic elements including trumpet and voice. At times it approaches cubist smooth jazz. Brad Bowden and Alana Rocklin, the people behind the name, know what they're doing, as it can't have been easy to program some of the rhythms. Then again, maybe the joke's on us.

Standouts: "Yup 1" has moments of comparative beauty.
Released: July 22
myspace.com/subid


THE TING TINGS
We Started Nothing
(Columbia)
This is the album that gave birth to what could have been the summer song of 2008 in the United States. But "That's Not My Name" didn't hit as big as it should have. What's left beyond that pristine, elementary single is a collection of forgettable-to-good tunes that lift from Blondie, The Flying Lizards and New Order but lyrically aspire only to Lily Allen in casual wear.

Standouts: "Traffic Lights" allows Katie White to stop the cheerleader shouts long enough to demonstrate that her sugar-wafer singing actually works in the right context. But they can't top "That's Not My Name."
Released: June 3
myspace.com/thetingtings

European Space Program

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Elaste Vol. 2: Space Disco

Tom Wieland, of digital-dub outfit 7 Samurai and techno-soul band Panoptikum, put together this worthy follow up to DJ Mooner's excellent inaugural Elaste collection.

Roaming the expanse of cosmic/space disco, Wieland concentrates on early '80s Euro soul -- a sound rooted in the brisk funk of prime '70s American disco but reaching toward futuristic grooves with the help of analog synthesizers where the horns and strings would normally be.

The mix opens strong with five solid disco workouts. But Elaste 2 gets really interesting at track six, "Sundance." The song, by Curt Cress, a German session drummer with a primarily jazz and prog-rock résumé, feels like a drum battle in which only one of the combatants is human.

Another workaday musician, English library composer Alan Hawkshaw, makes a good showing with "The Speed of Sound" -- a muscular bit of '70s cop-show funk that surges forward on the dual power of a Fender Rhodes and Clavinet.

Please note, The Typing Monkey staff put this mix to the test by setting the office CD player on random. After repeat plays, it never failed to play tracks 12 and 13 together, as they are meant to be.

Those tracks are The Vulcans' "Star Trek"-- a nifty, Moog-heavy reggae instrumental -- and Tony Allen's "NEPA Dance Dub." The latter finds the Fela Kuti drummer issuing a tense, syncopated Afro-funk heavy on the kind of simple repetition that Talking Heads employed.

Wieland manages to sneak in a couple Panoptikum cuts without breaking the mood, but that's not a big surprise given the style of music. Elaste 2 has no real party crashers, though the most dazzling moments shine much brighter than the rest. Either way, there's plenty to chew on here.

Reference materials: If you enjoy the sounds on Elaste 2, do spend some time investigating the Strut label, the efforts of the D*I*R*T*Y collective and, as if we don't hype it enough, the Smalltown Supersound label.

Better By Half

MUNK
Cloudbuster
(Gomma)
Given some of the song titles, it's not hard to imagine Munk's tunes as the soundtrack to an obscure fantasty film with a cult following. "Monopteros", "Psycho Magic" and "The Knights of Heliopolis" all inspire images of occult worlds where the barrier between technology and witchcraft is permeable.

That's especially true of the final cut ("Knights …") which begins with the same rigid kick drum that powers most of Cloudbuster. But the damp electronics and Mellotron-like flutes signal altered states of consciousness. A brief celebratory break with hi-hat and disco bass eventually decays into one final minute of rattling drone.

If this were an actual LP, side two beats side one, no contest. The two opening tracks -- "Live Fast! Die Old!" and "Down in L.A." indulge in the kind of coarse, nightlife-posturing that inspires scoffs from those who think electronic dance music is nonsense.

Guest vocalist Asia Argento doesn't do anything interesting during her three appearances. Matty Safer of The Rapture makes a better showing by playing bass on two songs -- his work in "The Rat Race" nails down a rhythmic strut reminiscent of Soft Cell's version of "Tainted Love."

Despite the 1:1 ratio of compelling to ho-hum, there's enough to Cloudbuster, Munk's second full length, to prompt The Typing Monkey to check out his 2006 debut LP Aperitivo.

Reference materials: Though there isn't an obvious musical correlation, for some reason the second half of Cloudbuster brings to mind the work of both David Shire and Alain Goraguer.

Bonus fun facts: Clearly Mathias Modica, the man behind Munk, cherry picks his references from the best of mythology both modern and ancient. Check out the Wikipedia entry for Heliopolis and then look at this picture of a monopteros in a park in München.

Resuscitation

KUDU
Back for More
(Nublu)
Great source material makes this collection of remixes work. Most of the Back for More tracks come from the band’s 2006 LP Death of the Party.

The title of that LP shows off the band’s winking self-awareness. On the surface it’s self-deprecation, but the subtext is both instruction and threat. Play Death when the festivities are sagging, but risk sending every one into fits of Kudu-induced arousal.


Back does more of the same. Singer and synth player Sylvia Gordon does sound like a lab-crafted blues mama of the man-killing sort. Yes, she’s part Siouxsie Sioux, and part Annabella Lwin, but there’s a lot of pure New York nightclub monarch in there too.

Gordon’s a clever lyricist as well, capable of delivering the usual come-ons that populate most dance-club vocals, yet excels at tales of apocryphal men (“Bar Star”) and women (“Black Betty”) who are often objects of envy, admiration or spite -- sometimes all three.

Nearly everything on Back aims for dancefloor bliss, generally inflating programmer/drummer Deantoni Parks’ elegant arrangements into slick, neon-lit modern disco. Sinden’s remix of “Let’s Finish” blows the subway dirt off the original and converts the poppy tune into an electro cut. And LingLing re-imagine the brisk pace of “Playing House” as stark, echo-filled dubstep.

Kudu even revisit their own “King Kong” and include a new collaboration with DJ/dance-music luminary Armand Van Helden (the retro-massive “Your Words”).

All of it’s ideal for heating up a summer party, though by the time Back for More ended, The Typing Monkey simply tossed Death of the Party into the player and danced even more enthusiastically.

Reference materials: What are you doing without Kudu’s Death of the Party in your collection? You crushed on Bow Wow Wow, spaz-danced to The Banshees, and later discovered the rhythm and blues side of TK Records. You know what to do.

Loving You, Oh Baby

KID CREOLE
Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1974 - 1983
(Strut)
Some of these cuts sizzle so hot that The Typing Monkey had to go buy a popsicle. August Darnell, nee Thomas August Darnell Browder, was a bassist and songwriter from the Bronx who, after scoring a few genre-blurring disco hits as part of Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, went on to moderate fame -- at least in the U.K. -- as the titular Kid Creole with his back-up singers The Coconuts.

A long time DJ and hip-hop sampling favorite, Kid Creole may not get much more love with the Going Places collection, but damn if it isn't a great showcase for his composition and studio skills.


The opener "Sunshower" by Dr. Buzzard's OSB reaches the playful, African abstractions that Talking Heads often aimed at. And The Aural Exciters' track "Emilie (Night Rate)" pulls off that rare and intoxicating sensation of the tropics at night. The percussion's arranged so well it sounds like the beach, birds and insects making their usual noises -- with a subliminal dance rhythm.

Creole went on to write a few musicals, and that shows in songs such as "Goin' to a Showdown" and "He's Not Such a Bad Guy After All." Even his production work and co-writing of Machine's seminal (tee hee) gay anthem "There But for the Grace of God Go I" can't help but turn the proud declarations into something resembling a cast number from a big production.

There are dry spells. Tracks six ("There But for …") through nine (Coati Mundi's "Pharoah") probably did wonders with the booger-sugar crowd who hustled and strutted to the 12-inch singles of the time, but don't do much beyond that atmosphere.

And though Creole did excel at his blend of disco, Latin and big-band/jump-blues style, Going Places smartly includes a few left field songs to show off his diversity. Cristina's reading of "Is That All There Is?" towels away the carnival sweat from Peggy Lee's defining rendition and replaces it with a seen-it-all attitude of a post-Studio 54 devotee still snorting, drinking and dancing even though her enthusiasm tamped out several cigarettes ago.

Better still is Kid Creole & The Coconuts' "Off the Coast of Me" that closes the disc. It's a lot of Van Dyke Parks, and a little bit Leon Redbone and five kinds of weird fun. If he didn't record it while lying in a hammock, we should be quite disappointed.

Reference materials: August Darnell dabbled in too many styles to list here, but for this collection, anyone unafraid of the more theatrical side of Blondie, Josie Cotton and Rachel Sweet and who also has a fondness for the kind of disco that didn't make it on to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack will have plenty to chew on.

Relax Baby Be Cool

STEREO TOTAL
Paris-Berlin
(Kill Rock Stars)
At what would normally be the start of side two of Stereo Total’s 7th LP, the duo delivers a socko double-shot of disco. "Merh Licht" hits the early 1980s style in which house and new wave were slapping a new coat of paint on disco and reselling it to the same audience. The track rests almost entirely on a constant hi-hat, kick drum and spare synthesizers.

Meanwhile "Ta Voix au Telephone" sounds like a well-equipped ABBA cover band not at all trying to disguise the fact that they're lifting from Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" and the blatant pornography of The Andrea True Connection's "More More More."

Find any of that distasteful? Then you should probably stop reading. Otherwise Paris-Berlin finds the painfully self-aware co-ed band finding a keen balance between the smooth electronics of Musique Automatique (2001) and their return noisy pop with Do the Bambi (2005).

At 14 songs, the record isn’t without lows -- particularly the been-there, done-thatness of “Patty Hearst” and the too quiet (and guest-heavy) “Baby Revolution.” But the high points provide enough fun that forgiveness comes quick.

“Komplex mit dem Sex” has Francoise Cactus singing hilarious German lyrics about gender confusion. There’s a silly Shonen Knife sounding number (“Plastic”) and enough icy keyboards and stiff guitar/drum rhythms to burst art student pretensions by playing the game better than any one else.

Appropriately, another stellar moment is when they cover Serge Gainsbourg’s “Relax Baby Be Cool.” Plastic Bertrand swiped this riff and fluffed it up a bit for “Ca Plane Pour Moi” but clearly it works best as a monotone command fit for a bank-heist getaway, or maybe a bad afternoon at the hash pipe.

Reference materials: Stereo Total will appeal to fans of Komeda the ye-ye sound of 1960s Paris.