this installment is a little boring compared to other beat tape posts (i know what you're thinking... his tracks can't get MORE tedious can they??), because they are written for a 2 hour documentary special on the discovery channel about DARKNESS. that's right, ambient sounds that go bump in the night. these tracks are hella easy to make though. i would get bored and put drum beats to some of them, so stick around for the second minute on the last five and maybe you'll have a epiphany.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF HEAR MARS AND GIRL TALK MADE SWEET LOVE?
anybody out there listen to girl talk? anybody out there listen to girl talk and then hey, that doesn't sound that hard? anybody out there actually try to put together a girl talk mix?
originally my (cocky) plan consisted of putting together an hour girl talk-inspired mix, then putting the product out on the blogsites under the false pretense that it was actually a girl talk mix. then of course i'd sit back and have a few well-earned snickers as the internet dissected whether or not it was actually a girl talk mix, whether it was up to par with his previous work... etc. but i eventually just said fuck it i'll post it here.
girl talk uses a ton of his own drum beats to link songs together and while putting together my mix i kind of felt like that constituted cheating - taking the easy way out when at a loss for transitions. the mix i put together is constructed COMPLETELY from other people's music. there are pros and cons to how that restriction affected the finished product.
anyways, i love girl talk and this ep (it's a little over half what night ripper and feed the animals run) is my homage to him, even if by the 18 of 19th minute the temptation to stretch mash-up sections out overcame me. that and making a mix like this is an eff-ing tedious project. i recently played this at a house party to a somewhat positive response. if i had to guess, there were too many samples flying by too quickly for people to sink their teeth into on the first listen. the last ten minutes got the most people shaking their booties, and it's not because that's the dopest part.
here are the samples i used, in chronological order, for my "What could happen if hear mars and girl talk made sweet love" mix. let me know whatchu think.
sugar ray - american pig
sublime - doin' time
thin lizzy - johnny the fox
funkadelic - you'll like it too
air - kelly watch the stars
beyonce - single ladies
mtume - juicy
lit - my own worst enemy
slick rick & doug e. fresh - lodi dodi
mystikal - danger
the notorious b.i.g. - hypnotize
jay-z - ruler's back
the notorious b.i.g. - ten crack commandments
parliament - do that stuff
clipse - mr. me too
mos def - ms. fat booty
the doors - five to one
the steve miller band - take the money and run
bjork - army of me
the beastie boys - so whatcha want
bram tchalkovy - whiskey and wine
pink floyd - comfortably numb
ll cool j - headsprung
the winstons - amen brother
oasis - champagne supernova
nelly - county grammer
amy winehouse - me & mr. jones
kanye west - get em high
missy elliott - wake up
thomas dolby - she blinded me with science
lady gaga - nothing else i can say (eh, eh) electric piano & human beat box version
christina aguilera - ain't no other man
the beatles - a day in the life
lcd soundsystem - big ideas
lykke li - i'm good, i'm gone
prince - gett off
cake - never there
john lennon - oh yoko
will smith - wild wild west
the beastie boys - brass monkey
the white stripes - walking with a ghost
daft punk - rock'n'roll
gary numan - cars
michael jackson - beat it
peter, bjorn and john - young folks
kanye west - amazing
lil jon - get low
r. kelly - same girl
trick daddy - in da wind
black eyed peas - boom boom pow
aaliyah - one in a million
outkast - bombs over baghdad
rihanna - don't stop the music
cake - dime
buena vista social club - chan chan
wreckx n effectx - rump shaker
lupe fiasco - i gotcha
wilson pickett - get me back on time
talib kweli - hot thing
daft punk - harder, better, faster, stronger
rjd2 - ghostwriter
kanye west - diamonds from sierra leone
hurricane chris - a bay bay
prince - do me, baby
daft punk - da funk
gorillaz - 19-2000
outkast - atliens
the flaming lips - the w.a.n.d.
led zeppelin - moby dick
gary numan - films
bob dylan - like a rolling stone
lil flip - game over
run d.m.c. - my adidas
the yeah yeah yeahs - maps
lil kim - how many licks?
fiona apple - criminal
the beatles - i've got a feeling
melvin bliss - synthetic substitution
dr. dre - light speed
the chemical brothers - where do i begin
wilbur "bad" bascomb - black grass
suzanne vega - tom's diner
timbaland - the way i are
lady gaga - lovegame
m.i.a. - galang
justin timberlake - my love
m.i.a. - bucky done gun
clipse - grindin
guns n roses - sweet child o mine
madonna - like a prayer
santa esmeralda - don't let me be misunderstood
white town - your woman
stevie wonder - superstition
tommy james & the shondells - mony mony
daft punk - phoenix
the rolling stones - (i can't get no) satisfaction
three 6 mafia - sippin on da syrup
burial - archangel
spoon - paper tiger
red hot chili peppers - under the bridge
chromeo - call me up (bag raiders remix)
justice - d.a.n.c.e. (alan braxe & fred falke remix)
being that when i first began using reason i was only making hip hop, beat tape no. 5 is kind of a return to form. the word's come down from the suits that i can start sending in rap music, which is good because that's the type of stuff i enjoy sitting down and making. these are pretty good, lite silk makes good use of a vocoded sample and you know you've churned out a banger (not hard to guess which one) when your first response upon playing it back is to recite the in da club lyrics over it at full volume early on a sunday morning. i'm pretty sure my new neighbors hate me.
beat tape #3 was/is an unfinished collection of tracks involving beatles samples. also, update on the previous post, it looks like heavy metal sun tan and facehugger have made it through the first round of elimination and were chosen by the editor of a discovery channel show described to me as "friday night lights, only it's dirt car racing" for possible inclusion. which will give me something to brag about when i bump into kanye on the street.
these were written specially as candidates for the same show. don't ask why half of the tracks could be called sad bastard music, or why a dirt car racing show would feature them. because i don't know.
"less dance, less 80's cheese style." that would be beat tape #1 review up in a fortune cookie.
"good hard/raplike/driving tunes." that would be the request of the music man, who is looking for background muzak for a "catch it, keep it"-like show. i only wish i knew what catch it, keep it is.
so my brosin (brother by theory, cousin by blood) jonathan just got back from japan, where all the hot beatsmiths go to test their battle skills. well, he did recently go to japan, but that has nothing to do with his friending me on facebook and letting me know if a) 2limb is still functioning (answer: no, but i do still bump that cd from time to time, even if i have to skip the masturbation skit because it really creeps me out) and b) that i should send him the dopeness via mp3 and he could make me a rockstar. i'm still going through ascap application hell, but i sent him beat tape #1, which is sorta like givin somebody a bump of snow and then whispering in their ear that you've got a couple keys in the other room. this is a weird post.
I owe you all an apology for the empty void in your lives over the past month or so. And one day you will get that apology.
This is long (duh), so I've broken the post up into a couple different categories, based on the level of interest you might have in this project. Read the options below and then scroll down accordingly:
The best and always preferred way to listen to this mix is on a long car drive (to hear it all the way through without interruption), WITH THE VOLUME UP.
I'll wait for you to get back.
[...]
However, if you really don't give a shit, press play now:
Now,
Scroll to Option A if:
You saw a link to this on Facebook, wondered what the hell Cory Allyn (who you haven't seen or heard from since 5th grade) is up to, and have no particular interest in the particulars themselves.
Scroll to Option B if:
You often click on Cory's links when he posts them online, find the music vaguely interesting, but find him or herself wishing on a regular basis that someone would tell Cory he's just not good enough to compete with the big leagues and he should not quit his day job.
Scroll to Option C if:
It sounds pretty cool, you like supporting a friend, and you'll put up with about a paragraph of his fanatical bullshit before returning to checking everyone's status.
Scroll to Option D if:
Your jaw drops to the floor upon hearing the first 30 seconds. How in God's name did he do that??? races through your mind. I want to know (basically) every detail and nuance that went into the production of this!!!! That and you have a rough understanding of audio applications.
Now on to the options:
OPTION A:
I took a bunch of songs I liked, put them into an audio program, and then rearranged them and layered them on top of each other to form one big long track. Enjoy, the ending's pretty cool.
OPTION B:
You may very well be right, but go to hell. Enjoy, the ending's pretty cool.
OPTION C:
The main mix, listed below, was actually a CD that I made for Elise a while back, when I was trying to introduce her to dance music. I tried to pick songs that were really straddling the line between pop and house, because I know she wasn't going to get excited about 10 minute long songs (that I enjoy by the way) that take 6 minutes to go anywhere. It turned into one of her favorite mixes (I've probably made her nearly two dozen), and I didn't change any of the sequencing when I started this project. It turned out really cool, and there are a lot of fun little details that you might not notice the first time, so I would hope this mix is a grower for those with enough patience. The inspiration for this mix pretty much comes from Daft Punk's Alive 2007 CD, both in style and execution.
OPTION D:
All of these songs were imported into Ableton, where I then quantized them. In simpler terms, I lined them up to Ableton's idea of a musical bar. Once the songs were locked into that template (and some of them took up to 45 minutes to do, especially the acapellas because there isn't a steady beat behind them to match up to), Ableton allows you to alter the audio file to any tempo and still have it be on beat. What that really means is that I could take two songs that are different original speeds, change them both to the same tempo, and they would still line up perfectly on top of each other.
Ableton also automatically regulates the pitch of every track that is quantized, no matter the tempo, so unlike a turntable, where if you make the record go slower the pitch gets lower, I could slow or speed up the tempo of a song and it would still be in the same pitch. Of course you can manually adjust the pitch of any audio as well, which I did most noticeably with "Green Light" to make it in key with other audio I was mixing under it.
All the above stuff was the really time-consuming part. After that, it was really just a matter of copy and pasting bars of music in different places, trying to retain the best parts of each song while still making a cohesive piece of music. The little pieces of flair on the end involved the Beat Repeat effect in Ableton, which created most of the stuttering noises you'll hear.
Here is the playlist as it was originally created for Elise:
MGMT - Electric Feel (Justice Remix)
MSTRKRFT - Easy Love
Uffie - Pop the Glock
The Eternals - Wrath of Zeus (Original Mix)
Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire
Prince - Erotic City
Lo-Fi-Fnk - Want U
Hot Chip - And I Was a Boy From School
John Legend - Green Light (feat. Andre 3000) (Diplo's Dade County 1988 Mix)
The following are, in chronological order, additional songs that were added to the mix. Most were drum breaks layered on top of main songs, a few were acappellas and one or two were used fairly extensively in mixing. (*) Any song with an asterisk next to it is from the French music label Crydamoure, which has an exhaustingly awesome collection of artists and tracks, almost all of which have been released exclusively as 12" singles.
Major Lazer - Hold the Line (feat. Mr. Lexxx & Santigold)
(*) Le Knight Club - Holiday on Ice
Daft Punk - Revolution 909
(*) Sedat - Feel Inside
Daft Punk - Oh Yeah
(*) Archigram - Carnaval
Alan Braxe - Vertigo
Justice - D.A.N.C.E.
A-Trak - Call That Girl Margherita (from his mix Dirty South Dance, I don't know what song he's mixing)
MSTRKRFT - Bounce (feat. NORE) (A-Trak Remix)
The Encore
The last part of my mix might sound familiar to some people because its a complete reconstruction of Daft Punk's Alive 2007 encore. The only version you can get your hands on is (obviously) a live version from their tour. This version is not live, which is not some sort of studio wizardry where I was able to lower the audience noise in the background, but I have in fact found each of the different samples the French duo used and recreated the encore, and at least for the first half I did it pretty faithfully (and might I say impressively).
While it might scream blasphemy (and that would be my reaction coming across something like this), I decided that about halfway through the mix, after the peak climax of the Together bass dropping, I could one up those French fuckers. And I think I have. I would hope anyone who had the good fortune to attend one of these shows two years ago would agree with me that if the encore had played out the way I've constructed it, it would have been absolute mayhem.
These are the pieces encompassing the last 11 minutes:
Daft Punk - Human After All ('Guy-Man After All' Justice Remix)
Archigram - Carnaval
Daft Punk - Revolution 909
Daft Punk - The Prime Time of Your Life (Para One Remix)
Disco Italiano - Chella'lla
Together - Together
Sedat - Feel Inside
Daft Punk - One More Time
? - ?????
Here is the encore as a separate track, in case anyone is just interested in hearing that.
And here is the original Daft Punk track, live from the first show on their Alive 2007 tour in Bercy, France:
Finally, here is a compressed folder containing all the original tracks. Different people will have different levels of involvement with my mix; in some cases people might not know any of the original songs before listening to my mix. In that case, it would be understandably hard to differentiate between the original work and what I've done to it. To be fair, that could make for an equally enjoyable (albeit different) listening experience, but in the end listening to the songs in their original form really highlights the amount of effort (this mix took me about three weeks to complete, and at times I was working on it for four or five hours each day) that I put into this damn thing.
Over and above all, just have fun with it. It's music and it's meant to be enjoyed, so do so. Oh and please comment; it's the very least you could do.
TO DOWNLOAD ANY OF THE SONGS YOU'RE STREAMING, JUST CLICK ON THE CORRESPONDING "DIVSHARE" ICON AND IT WILL TAKE YOU TO THE CORRECT PAGE.
michael jackson is dead. it's sad that in a lot of ways i wasn't entirely surprised to hear the news; it was shocking, but after that ten seconds when it all sank in i was left thinking about what michael's legacy was to this generation. mtv, in a confounding state of sensibility and honor not seen since... well when they started playing mj, is doing a bunch of interviews, and they're trying to bring in viewers that really only know jackson as this media freak who used to have a few catchy songs.
i think jackson is like the beatles: one of those musical acts that will never really see someone come in after them and do it quite as well or rather quite as orginally. it took me years before i truly appreciated michael's music, and a lot of friends of mine still don't appreciate it. maybe they will now. isn't that how it works with dead musicians?
i don't think the london shows were going to turn out that well, and i think the new material he had been working on with will.i.am and akon among other people wouldn't even have been a glimmer in the face of the body of work he had produced in the late 70s and 80s. nothing against him, but again i think the media will be quick to speculate what would have happened if today hadn't happened.
i'm not sure much will change for me from here on out. thriller and off the wall were in my car this morning, and they'll be there when i wake up tomorrow.
no music posts today. how could you pick just one? or ten?
so for those who are linked biographically with me in other ways besides this blog, you know that i am in the process of moving. so we're in the new house, we got cable internet. WHAT THE FUCK MAN, i'm sure you're saying. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE MAJOR LAZER SHOW???? i know, i would want to know too. but until tomorrow, when hopefully i will have the energy to conquer the massive post-show review that will include video and pictures as well as you know my general vibes, you'll have settle for the radically new design of my blog. okay, so my boy will just hooked me up with a new logo. but its siiiiiiiiiiick, right???
yeah i know what the hell do i have to say about a dancehall album? i was trying to think of a proper analogy, and the best i could come up with would be like a literary snob trying to make sense of 8 mile (inside joke for someone who doesn't read this blog).
it would be hard to not compare the major lazer album to mia's kala, since both diplo and switch (who comprise major lazer) had such a big hand in that. or maybe it would be more fair to compare it to santogold's debut, which featured similar contributions that probably turned out much more similar sonically.
there are the songs that just sort of sound like pretty generic dancehall to me, and then there's the outer space productions. for me, the vocals here are fairly interchangeable; the guest list is varied but since i can't tell what the hell they're saying half the time (more of a comic exaggeration pointing out my skin color than actual fact, although it is worth pointing out that diplo and switch and both just as white as i am, and i'm pretty sure neither of them grew up in jamaica).
i can't imagine much of this stuff is common to the genre: there's the surf-guitar riff in lead-off hold the line, the uhhh... nursery rhyme wtf of mary jane, the otherwise boring auto-tuned pop of keep it goin louder that somehow manages to redeem itself with a simple drum beat and the last ten seconds of eurotrance synths. and that's ultimately what sets the record apart. the autotuned baby crying that everyone was talking about surfaces as a minute long skit that touches on messages of peace and respecting maternal figures. i shuddered when i heard lil jon's voice, only to breath a sigh of relief when he left three seconds later.
so there's definitely some highlights that are going to make for a crazy show. pon de floor is the album highlight, and i'll let you know how mental the crowd goes when they drop that shit, but i'm sure someone will post the footage on youtube anyways.
when you hear the bassline feat. ms thing
pon de floor feat. vybz kartel (what the fuck is that sound oh hell who cares)
i know i know i've been slackin on the blog tip. shit's been real with parties, concerts comin up and, you know, moving two towns over.
this really hits close to home, not on the music side of things, but because i'm in the elongated process of sending back pants that are just way too tight.
surprisingly, i don't go to concerts that often, but apparently i have pretty good taste when i do make up my mind. the last one was a little shindig in grant park, chi-town, a couple summers ago where i saw these two robots in leather motorcycle suits on top of a pyramid that was pretty cool. about a month ago i decided my next venture out into the big world would be major lazer. surprise surprise, when i opened up the summer fiction issue of the new yorker (robot on the cover, strange coincidence) to find the mag's pop-music critic fancied himself a little piece of the action at s.o.b.'s. well too bad sasha frere-jones, whoever you are. if i see you at the show i'm gonna punch you in the gut.
just a little taste on what you guys are missing out on. yes that's a baby crying, run through a muthafuckin auto-tune. major lazer album, would you leak already?!?!?!?!?!?!
in high school, and maybe as a freshman in college, i would always tell people the white album was my favorite album of all time. how disappointed i now find myself today realizing that it could have been this much better.
now i know, this has been around since february. i did know about it back then, although for whatever reason i did not listen to it. now i wish i had, but i suppose it doesn't really matter.
of course i am referring to the "lost" 20th take of revolution 1. for all you beatle nubes, there are three released versions of revolution, the first real political song from the fab four. the first was released as the b-side to the hey jude single, and is considered the precursor to the heavy metal genre, although i think the kink's "you really got me" is also a serious contender. the second and third versions were released on the fourth side of the album's self-titled double album, released in 1969. revolution 1 is a campfire acoustic version of revolution. revolution 9 is a mind-fuck of audio bytes and studio processing, the first real sampled piece of music.
while revo 9 is cool and everything, it really just sucks to listen to. it has zero replay value, and i think i've only listened to the entire thing all the way through once or twice. that's where this uncovered take 20 comes in, bridging the gap between revolution 1 and 9. it's got a hey jude extenda coda vibe, some freudian mama and papas but above all else you can listen to it and enjoy its avant gardiness, which is more than i can say about revo 9.
so my girlfriend blew up before i did. yep, she's the bees knees to burt's bees. they're probably going to end up supplying her with a couple year's worth of chapstick, which is bad news for the leeching underachieving boyfriend. i mean, couldn't she have posted her flickr with a bunch of images of bagel bites? or jazzmutant lemurs? let's hope she doesn't get any smart ideas and dump my dumb ass.
as the album gets closer and closer to leaking on the internet (hey i have to get familiar by june 13), mad decent dropped the drop the line video, feat. rearranged audio that is presumably how the song will sound on the album. i dunno.... santi's verse was tacked on the end, there's no "hold the line" chorus vocal and the instrumental's stretched out a bit. personally i liked the dj edit better.
also, this is just so dope. lady gaga... oh man. to quote an ok coen bros movie, "you fascinate me."
some guy put together a venn diagram (oh hell its one of those visual writing tools you have to use in second grade) of michael jackson, famous musicians you may or may not associate with the king of pop on a regular basis, and the mj songs they sampled from him. it's a cool list, i've been thinking all day about other examples and could only come with two he missed.
Outsidaz - Macosa (feat. Eminem) (diggin in the crates for that one)
interpolating Wanna Be Startin Somethin from Thriller
(my digital copy is mp4 format which isn't supported but you know what it sounds like)
Louis La Roche - Love (i had for a long time attributed this song to Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk Dude) because of a mean trick some internet thug played on cyberspace last valentine's day)
samples It's The Falling In Love from Off The Wall
[SCENE: sitting around a campfire. at dusk. someone (no names but its me) plays an ugly rendition of a famous beatles song on a martin (!) guitar that is not his]
"blackbird singing in the dead of night...."
"homie scored a key he's gonna fly...."
"wait what song is that?"
"oh god... its.... damn who is it by?"
"i think it starts with an s. swimmy, swammy, supersonic?"
man, whut a fuckin memorial day weakend my boy has dis private jet so we all chillin in flight, on r way 2 da florida keys we got the music box bumpin you know what it is but all a sudden da stewardess comes up (she look just like 1 of those coco girlz) screamin n shit and then a pilot gets on da speakers causing mass hysteria 2, sayin we gonna die, we got no engine, i'm like whut?? we like 53,000 feet in da muthafuckin air i ain't no going down over sum gator infested swamp with no fuckin mosquito. i look over at my boy and he's mad spaced out, and i'm like yo do sumthin and he looks at me sez like man yo eyes are mad red u been smokin 2 much and that's when it hit me i wuz just reel high n it was all just a mirage so i ordered 1 of doze tropicall drinks wit da lil umbrella in em n we had a holiday on ice u know we had 2 take it to the streets! it wuz such a great time shout outz 2 my doggs archigram, buffalo bunch, knight club and play paul 4 being so dope i even shed a tear or 2 n when i got home i crydamoure.
all the tracks posted on here are purely for promotional purposes. while i'm not interested in compensation for my tunes, if i'm posting someone else's music on this site, it's definitely worth your hard-earned dollar and i suggest you get your ass to the nearest record store (while they still exist) or log into itunes and support the artists. that being said, if anyone has a problem with a song i've posted, leave me a comment and i will take it down immediately.
