Well first off, it's been almost a week since I last posted. It's also been about 18 days since I started this blog. So I've missed 33% of the days available for me to post. I know I said that my goal is one post per day. Let's just all agree that such a goal wasn't intended to be followed by the letter, but instead to create a guilt-invoking mechanism that would produce palpable shame over an accumulating lack of posts. The good news is that I have certainly been blogging in my mind, and while my cup not runneth over with posting ideas, it also not runneth out.
Anyway, I stumbled back across a download from about 2 months ago that I'm listening to right now. It's by somebody named Baby Jazz. It's a track called "Michael Jordan." It's a mash-up of sorts, just over 12 minutes long and in something like movements--maybe 4 or 5? Overall it has the personality of a Saturday morning cartoon. It actually reminds me MORE of what those aliens in that movie The Explorers were probably listening to when they got high.
It's starts with creepy sounds of sped-up swing-sets and voices, various clicks and creaks, and finally a slightly manipulated, elegant loop of a woman singing down a simple 4 note scale. Cartoon samples flit in and out, some gaining more foothold (and recognition) on the track than others. The song really opens up with an electric percussion sample that carries along all the other miscellaneous vocals, voices, and loops.
After a serious threat down from the Shredder (to the Ninja Turtles, of course), the song shifts ethereally at about 3 and half minutes in. It sounds a lot like the way Panda Bear's "Bros" floods the front end of Person Pitch, in a wash of soft drum set and chimes, and bit of chanting--and always with the backing voice samples (whoo!...oh yeah...whoo!....oh yeah...). Here we also find an iterated Atari or Nintendo sequence that might sound, out of context, like your video game character character dying! But when embedded in the song, it's just one more constructive piece of construction.
The cacophony builds again until about 5:05, when the slowly building funk line finally precipitates, and forms the backbone for a new slew of samples. It starts with somebody talking about "50 million dollars?!"; then a piano drizzling down scale; then the sound of video game coins being collected; then kids screaming!; then the building vocal loop going "la la la la la la" down the same scale as the piano and coins. There are also some weird scribble noises. It's another big, pleasant mess that ends more abruptly this time (at around 6:25).
Here we enter a more sensual movement, like if Nightmares on Wax had sampled Galaga here and there. So yeah, there's some video game space sounds, but also the building sound of a ecstatic woman yielding various gasps, some footsteps, and miscellaneous husky breathing and talking. The whole beat has slowed here, and this section is recognizable as an important interlude only as it picks right back up at 7:40 with a kick drum leading into a drum machine with a heavy back beat, some bells, and some TV action noises as well as one of most familiar sounding sound bites of them all: "Nobody turns down drugs!"
After building to a peak of sorts, an acoustic guitar loop breaks the tension; the dissonant sounds all meld into what sounds like the business of a happy cartoon factory in the middle of the work day. As the guitar leaves, the calmer voices that joined it sink together into an ambient scape of soft electric violins, a muted children's chorus, ticking clocks, and a slew of Saturday morning television noises. A final drum solo lands the plane at almost the 12 minute mark. Fittingly, though, the last sample and sound to hit the ears is one of those phrases that will exist forever in the 9 year-old region of my mind: "After these messages....[ruuuuuufff!]....we'll be riiight back!"
Hopefully if you actually read this, you listened to the song too! I appreciate the creativity that it took to make this--there is almost nothing organically made here, as far as the ear can tell. I am fine with that, since the artist makes a new and compelling composition out of a motley assortment of parts. Give it a try! And next time I see you, let me know what you think.
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