For Shannah

Here is another find from the amazing UBU 365 days project!

This found cassette was made by some dude called Jimmy in 1988 for a girl called Shannah to show off his musical talent.

Most of the songs are novelty but quite a lot of effort has been put into the home production.

Reminds me of some of the tracks I've made for people in the last few years, although it was quite a lot harder to do 20 years ago!

The first track is the weakest, but there are some good moments afterwards.

The weak jokes never stop though.

"For Shannah (Songs I Made)" by Jimmy

More info from UBU here.

The Eight Seasons Of Chromalox

A musical made in the late 60s/early 70s by a heating company called Chromalox to promote itself.

I thought this kinda stuff only found its way into musical form in the satirical consumerist lyrics that pop up on Frank Zappa records!

Anyway, here it is and if you want to read way, way more about it and possibly find stuff a bit like it, go here.

Disgusting Musical Overload

Kimitaka Matsumae

Mutant Sounds has a lot of good and extremely rare stuff on it, but I think this guy is especially amazing!

He's a Japanese video game music composer and that comes through very heavily in some of the tracks. The four albums in the series "You Are The Fox" all contain loads of quite short tracks which jump around between many ideas,  ranging from cute to insane in quite a hyperactive way.

Most of them are executed electronically, which gives them some coherence, and there is some sort of style that comes through as the tracks race past.

Here's a link to the links provided on Mutant Sounds, although I had trouble downloading CD1, part one, and started with CD 2, part one, but let me know if that's just me.

It's all on Rapidshare though, making it a bit of a pain to download it all. 

So far I've only got the whole of CD2 and CD 1, part two, but already there's loads of stuff that I really like.

Tokyo Rose

Here's yet another album by Van Dyke Parks, except this one was especially hard to find.

I ended up buying it from an Amazon "third party merchant" but it wasn't too much.

"Tokyo Rose" was released in 1989 and aims to mix Eastern music with his already trademark take on Western music.

I think the mix is done quite well, although my knowledge of Eastern music extends mainly to hearing the soundtrack to Okami for hours at a time.

It's still pretty cheesy in some bits, despite being very clever, and if you haven't heard any Van Dyke Parks yet then I'd recommend starting with his debut (and best) album "Song Cycles".

Another bonus to actually buying the physical CD was getting to see the back cover which is more amusing than the front.

"Tokyo Rose" by Van Dyke Parks

Like this... Like this... Midget...

Bombay Bicycle Club have got their new single "Always Like This" up on their Myspace.

Check it out if you like that sort of stuff.

I heard it a few months ago actually in a bizarre car ride, and I remember it being a stand out track on the album (which is gonna come out in June).

They're signed to Island records now too, so they could seriously make it or break it!

Anyway, what I found amusing about the single was how much the looped "like this" vocal hook reminded me of how the word "midget" was dealt with at the end of this.

I can't believe I've already linked to that twice on this relatively young blog.

Actually, I can. And to prove it here's the track "Sweet Tooth" off his album "Double Up".

Worth listening to while reading the lyrics, just to experience the full blast of its horny crudeness.

Konono N°1

These guys are an African band who play electric versions of "thumb pianos", or likembé if you wanna call them that. Then they're backed by various percussion instruments and sometimes vocals.

Liquid Liquid

This band sounds pretty ahead of their time, or times haven't moved on very much.

One or the other.

Raymond Scott

Raymond Scott (1908-1994) was an American composer who made very early and impressive use of electronics.

Nico Muhly

Young composer based in New York. Went to Columbia and Julliard. Generally acclaimed as a wonder-kid with the usual backlash.

"Mothertongue" is his second album and was released last year.

Its ten tracks divide three large and quite different compositions.

It's arguable if he's breaking any new ground, but its very ambitious and Muhly pulls it off quite well, with the most successful experiment being the last one.

Called "The Only Tune" its a warped and disjointed version of old folk/Americana which I found interesting and actually enjoyed!

Not surprising but quite funny...

"Britney Spears' live microphone feed, isolated."

XTC

I've had some of their music for quite a while now but I'm only recently getting really into it.

They started out in the 70s and most of their known stuff is from the 80s, but they were still active until quite recently.

Very much a predecessor to Blur's experimental pop (Blur even wanted one of them to produce "Modern Life Is Rubbish"), but I'd say they're actually more ambitious and complex than Blur most of the time.

Their 1986 album "Skylarking" is considered one of their best, despite the fact that it didn't sell very well at the time and that the recording sessions with Todd Rundgren (who did a very good job in the end) were quite strained.

Here is a video of them performing slightly earlier material - "Yacht Song" from their 1982 album "English Settlement". It might even be one of their last live performances seeing as their main man Andy Partridge had a breakdown around that time, turning them into a studio band.

Martin Creed

You know that artist who won the Turner Prize in 2001 for a piece of work which was simply the lights of an empty gallery space turning on and off?

Well it turns out he makes music too!

This song was recorded a few years ago but reminds me of the recent Dirty Projectors collaboration with David Byrne which I posted a while back, especially in the chorus.

"I Don't Know What I Want" by Martin Creed

You might also want to check out his extremely well catalogued website or him talking about the track and how it links to his work.

Microsoft Songsmith

Trifle posted this on Videothunder a few days ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. 

Basically, Microsoft Songsmith takes melodies you sing and finds chords to fit them. The software's barely out and people have already posted videos using acapellas from known songs.

This one's surprisingly catchy:

Circle of 5ths ahoy!

Anyway, this one's actually more original than most covers:

The bridge for this is made amazing, but the chorus flops hard:

"Embedding has been disabled by request" but watch it anyway.