Ziggy Stardust Remixed Cover

Hand’s up everyone who likes mashups? Well I do. I am fascinated by the whole idea of taking two (or more songs) and creating something new  out of it. It turns out I am not alone.

Head over to  Ziggy Stardust Remixed and listen to say, Suffragette City. This was always one of my favourite Bowie tracks from the  Ziggy albuma. The whole chorus printing itself to your brain and Mick Ronsons amazing guitar work.  The new version manages to retain the swagger and attitude of the old while transforming it into something totally new, it’s quite yummy.

From the website

Mashup genius dj BC sez, “Bowie’s classic glam album, remixed, mashed-up and spaced-out. With bootleg mixes and mashups from myself, ATOM, A plus D (Bootie), World Famous Audio Hacker, and ToToM. Videos from VJ Brewski and AJ ‘Hatperson’ Mazur. (You may remember AJ as the genius behind the now legendary ‘Cooking By The Book’ video.) Art by the very talented Shana B. This record has been in the works since ‘Wu Orleans’ but the arrival of my daughter and some ‘official’ releases distracted me, and drove me to seek help completing it. And I am glad I did. A+D’s MGMT mashup and ATOM’s ‘Star Man’ remix are nothing short of genius.

How about Deep Purple and Bowie doing there respective Highway songs mixed by ToTom or Shawn Mullins , The Beatles and Bowie put together in a track called “Ziggy’s Lullaby“, this is just priceless.

Highly recommended.  Download the album from Ziggy Stardust Remixed

But the really good bit is that Ant Neely has released “Not Fit For Human Consumption” (the aforementioned new album) as a Creative Commons download. It’s full of very cool, genre bending electronic music that merges sounds from the 1940s and ’50s with more 21st Century timbres and textures.

Because the album has been released under a creative commons license, Neely actively encourages people to remix or rebuild upon Neely’s work, as long as it’s for non-commercial purposes.

Musician and composer Ant Neely is an advocate of literally spreading his music around the world. A member of the electronic band Subthunk, Neely has turned the release of his first solo album, Not Fit For Human Consumption, into a global experiment by leaving copies of the CD in public locations for people to find, copy, and then leave someplace else. With the help of those who find the CDs, Neely is tracking the movement of his album on his Web site. One disc made its way from England to Brazil while another hopped around the U.K. before landing in Africa.

Head over to www.antneely.com/, download the album and then if you like it slip him some bucks if you think it’s worth it. He covers such a wide musical landscape you are sure to find something you like.

Highly Recommended

Website at www.antneely.com/

I ran across Cineplexx a little over two years ago and pegged them for a Duggup – that’s as far as it got; until now. Going through my backlog, I decided it was time for a revisit. Two years on and I seriously wonder what took me so long.

Brazillian Sebastian Litmanovich is the musician behind Cineplexx and numerous other musical projects. Cineplexx is electro pop that puts you in mind of a David Lynch movie, that is, very interesting music but just a little disturbing. Have a listen and you’ll see what I mean. There are unexpected things happening beneath the surface.

Since I visited the Cineplexx website last – there has been an addition. Sebastian with his brother and collaborator Martin have released “Picnic” an album of diverse offerings that range from the sweet to the deranged. Not being able to understand Spanish is probably an asset in this case just use your imagination.

Think mashups, imagine windswept headlands with windswept singers facing into the wind, their white scarves billowing behind or bouncing down a rutted wide open road in a roofless touring car with a wicker basket on the back, or perhaps whirling around on a roundabout in a children’s playground. Any or all the above or make up your own images.

I find Cineplexx a musical experience that both intrigues and at the same time I can’t help but wonder why it has the facination for me. I guess you will have to listen to it and make up your own mind. Begin with the video of the single from “Picnic” called “HOJAS”.

Then take a walk over to MySpace for a tasty selection from “Picnic”. Enjoy

Postscript: Oh crumbs I just watched the video – I’ve been channelling this guy!

Glyn “Bigga” Bush is an indie producer and DJ from the South West of England. His two main projects BiggaBush and Lightning Head reflect his love of dub reggae, Brazilian rhythms and Afro-Cuban beats and he has produced two albums “Studio Don” (Best Seven/Sonar Kollektiv) and “BiggaBush Free” (Stereo Deluxe) as well as many remixes (Tapper Zukie, Tosca, Up Bustle & Out).

Over at www.myspace.com/biggamusicHis latest album project “13 Faces of Lightning Head” is a mix of afrobeat, deep funk, reggae and ethiopic grooves and is seriously addictive.

BiggaBush’s DJ stuff uses virtually any style of music to create interesting grooves, from jungle to boogaloo, from dubstep to breakbeat. But more importantly for me, he fronts a 16-piece percussion group, the Magic Drum Orchestra, which plays a wide range of grooves including samba, batucada, samba reggae, afrobeat, bembe, dancehall and funk.

DJ Fitchie & Joe Dukie of Fat Freddy’s Drop get the BiggaBush and Lightning Head treatment. Visuals by Schmooz and Grainy One

Websites at www.biggabush.co.uk/ and www.myspace.com/biggamusic

Joe Frawley is not a musician in the conventional sense, more performance artist than anything else. He specialises in soundscapes as explained by his website:

Joe Frawley’s Sound Collages are intended to blur the boundary between music and sound art. Using found sounds, field recordings, recontextualized speech, and samples from classical music (e.g., Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, and Peter Warlock’s The Curlew) the composer has created challenging yet accessible sound compositions with a hypnotic dream-like quality. Musical episodes merge with bells, birds, wind, and other ambient sounds as ghostly voices rise, fade, and recur according to their own dream logic. The final result is an intangible yet coherent experience of fleeting mental images the composer compares to “a mystical radio station that broadcasts from the subconscious.”

When I came across his website – my first thought was to slide it over to Thatch as a chill piece but after listening to the tracks I can honestly say that they brought a smile to my face. Interesting sound samples juxaposed with snatches of melody and spoken word.

The excerpt from his 2007 release Tangerine is quite lovely, haunting and wistful. Listen to it with a good pair of head phones.

Joe Frawley Music – Audio Releases

I don’t know what to do with this band (it seems I am still stuck in Americana mode). Arranger and musician Conrad Praetzel calls his label Paleo Music, which is big hint I supect and if you check out his work, which includes titles like Between Past and Present and Myths and Memories and Of My Native Land the album I am investigating at the moment, I think we can see a pattern forming here. Praetzel, it seems, is a former archeologist, is obsessed with music’s past and its relationship to cultural identity. But rather than simply lovingly recreate the sounds that fascinate him as some musical nostalgists elect to do, he takes traditional music and reinvents it in a new context. I suspect he is making an ironic point about the way our choices are diminishing instead of expanding in the 21st Century.

Here is the hype from the website…

Neo-traditionalists Conrad Praetzel and Robert Powell stake out their claim in the Americana landscape with an eclectic mix of ambient folk and acid/alt country. Clothesline Revival blends electronic and acoustic beats with dobro, mandolin, guitars, lap and pedal steel guitar, ebow, atmospherics and more to create a captivating new sound with an old-time haunting quality.

Included are adaptations of historical field recordings (several recorded by the legendary American musicologist John A. Lomax) including performances by Leadbelly, Ora Dell Graham, and an unidentified old train caller. Vocalists Wendy Allen and Tom Armstrong lend their talents to songs by Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Onie Wheeler, Anne Briggs as well as to traditional American folk songs. Wendy Allen, from North Carolina, is a mesmerizing singer and interpreter of American roots music, while Tom Armstrong’s vocals recall classic honky- tonk and country crooners of the fifties like Wynn Stewart and Letfy Frizzel.

I don’t think that what they are doing is all that different from the things that Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span did to traditional music in the late 60′s and early 70′s. They took songs from a different era and made them relevant to the audience of the time. Conrad is doing the the same thing with his use of definitively American sounds, mixing eclectic traditional instrumentation with tasteful atmospherics and electronic beats to create a style he’s termed “acid country” or “ambient folk” (how about folk mashup) whatever you call it I find it incredibly interesting to listen to.

Have a listen to some vocals from a 1940 field recording of Ora Dell Graham Pullin’ the Skiff while you think about all this stuff.

Back at the end of September last year I discovered tryad and wrote a brief post about them at ThatchSpace (my other blog).

Tryad are now (in)famous as being one of the first internationally-separated internet Creative Commons bands. They released their first album, Public Domain to critical acclaim and it is still in the Jamendo top ten albums nearly a year later. The members of Tryad – Arna, Ema, John Holowach, rjmarshall, and vavrek – met through the internet after Holowach remixed marshall’s work, and then vavrek added vocals. During 2005, for over nine months they collaborated, all without having ever spoken to each other (only e-mailed), and produced a strikingly original work.

Combining elements of trip-hop, alt rock, classical instrumentation, and electronica, Public Domain breaks the mold of what you’d expect. From the hard-thumping bass, drums, and chorus of “The Final Rewind” (which is my personal pick for best track on the album) to the chilled sixties feel of “Peace On Earth (Same Place)”. I’ll bet there’s something here for everyone to appreciate.

How did all this come to be?
Lets use Final Rewind as an example. (Keep in mind that this is all an educated guess on my part).

In March, 2005, rjmarshall puts up a piece called Tinderbox at ccMixter. (Have a listen)
and tags it media, original, sampling_plus, audio, mp3, 44k, stereo, 128kbps, electronic, drums, instrumental. It’s very pretty pretty.

Next up John Holowach hears Tinderbox and thinks to himself “not bad but it needs just a bit more…..” and so he adds some more samples
ccMixter The Final Rewind

The vavrek, arna, and emma add their bits and after a lot of bandwidth and tooing and froing across the net,then a quick polish up and after 9 months we get to hear the results of all their hard work. “Public Domain”

If you go to tryad.org/download.html you can find a number of methods of acquiring the album. Play and download the MP3′s, Torrent, you name it.

And here is a track from their new album called Beauty, there are only three tracks up so farm ore to come though.
Beauty_(Holowach_9_11_Mix)_(feat_Steven_J_Kukla)

I cant wait to hear the rest of the tracks, this is so lush and full, I probably should have saved it for a “Chill piece” on Sunday but who could wait. (Remember what a bummer it was when discovered Christmas is only ONCE a year).

If you like the stuff send the band some money. They’ll think it’s Christmas.

Today I am covering a whole album rather than just a song. If you have any curiosity about mashups, well have I got a post for you.

For me, the Kleptones are the benchmark for mashup and have conveniently released a double-disc album called “24 Hours”.

Now in a nod to 21st century distribution, you can download an individual tracks, whole-disc torrents, or as large MP3 files with cue sheets (if you need to ask this isn’t your preferred method)for CD burning.

There’s some truly wonderful stuff here my favourite (so far) is the Bowie’s It Ain’t Easy/Clash/Rock the Casbah blend, 1100 Casbah Ain’t Easy. (Oh yeah there is a language warning on this one right at the beginning) or how about Land of Confusion by Genesis and Edwin Starr – War 1800 War Of Confusion(which fit together so well).

OK, not all of this works but when it does it’s great. 99% of this genre that I hear is disposable or just badly done. (Kylie vs Human League) but when I heard the Kleptones Night at The Hip Hopera, I got it for the first time. I could see how I had been approaching this music from the completely wrong angle. Think collage and then think the Surrealists and collage.

Anyway enough about me, try a couple of tracks and let me know what you think.