Category Archives: Musical Projects

Impossible Nonsense

Here are the final track annotations for ‘Impossible Music‘.

Purple Cow‘ is quite amusing. It features some stupid singing from me, and a mystery relative of mine doing a rap. It’s pretty dumb, as I have no doubt you will agree.

I apologize for my earlier remark‘ is actually the first track I completed for this. I spent about 10 minutes on it, and it shows. Weirdy backwards singing and some guitar are laid over a nice Cy Coleman sample. After 30 seconds or so it peters out. Pop genius? I have a while to go yet…

Drunken Mechanic‘. Ok, I think we’ve now reached the bottom of the barrel. I sample a french girls chorus and lay a pretty lame beat over it, Fat boy slim-style. Until just before my deadline to press the CD of this album, that was about all I had. It was about 4 in the morning, and so I hauled myself up and laid down a couple of completely random parts on the synth. Around this time I became so tired that I started walking into things and had to go to bed. So this is more of a historical document than a song really.

Fine Spray‘. This one is pleasant enough, mainly because my only performances for it were ‘pouring a glass of orange juice’ and ‘flushing the toilet’. The rest of it is merely an assortment of watery samples and strangely modern-indie-sounding 60s surf track.

Soft Landing‘, the final track on the album, is a case study in how to get lots of great samples together and contrive something crap out of them. From the moment I heard the Luiz Bonfa/Maria Toledo sample which takes up most of the latter half of this song, I was eager to cut it up and make something great out of it. For whatever reason, that didn’t really happen. Hmm.

Alright, I’m done with this nonsense now, I promise. Until the next nonsense comes along.

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Impossible Music

As threatened, I am going to introduce some more clangers from my ‘Impossible Music’ album.

Red drink‘ is built on 2 samples: one from Lalo Schifrin‘s ‘the wave’ (from his great early 60s album ‘piano, strings and bossa nova’, aka ‘Insensatez’), and one from Gallon Drunk‘s superb 1992 album ‘You the night and the music’ (I can’t remember exactly which track this is from; I think it may be ‘tornado’). Anyway, I used the two together because on first listen, Lalo’s ‘the wave’ sounded exactly like Gallon Drunk to me – the harsh piano sound was very familiar. I contribute almost nothing to this song – just sample manipulation and a little piano noodling near the end.

He just left‘ is a repetitive little atmospheric piece with a Lee Hazlewood voice sample from ‘the NSVIP’s’. This one really could have been a lot better, but I was in a rush and didn’t really end up developing it at all. The string backing is from a surprisingly good Andy Williams LP called, I think ‘The face I love’.

I don’t remember what I ended up calling this one, but it’s a sadly underdeveloped little harp riff with a slow rock beat put behind it. I like it, so I wanted to use it, but alas, the listener ends up coming away from this one saying ‘what’s the point’…

Are you alright in there? is a very stupid backwards russian large beat song. I should have polished up a little more. Maybe I’ll return to it and score a monster club hit. But somehow I doubt it.

Ok, we’re really getting to the bottom of the barrel here, but there’s a couple more I will introduce later. Then we can be done with all this nonsense.

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Dream

Well, I’m back. The lack of recent posts has been due to the fact that while at work I have been working hard, and while at home I’ve been mostly sleeping. I have no major new music purchases to report; I did get a used CD in the mail last week – the Young Holt Trio‘s ‘Wack Wack’ album from 1967. It’s pretty nice – very like the Ramsey Lewis material from the earlier 60s, except possibly a little simpler, with a tiny bit of funny spoken stuff over the top (e.g. ‘You KNOW I love you baby….!’).
Other music related activity – I finished ‘Impossible music’, and will post the entire thing here for all my screaming fans. I think it’s pretty awful, very silly and under-rehearsed. But I’m glad I did it anyway. High(low)lights? Well, there are 12 songs, a few of which are really 40 second fillers. Of the songs with any substance at all (and there’s not much), ‘Komorov’s Dream‘ is quite interesting (if you like sheer nonsense involving backwards russian speech), ‘warmer times‘ is nice and summer-y, even though it’s a total new order/Smiths/Cocteau Twins rip-off. What else… ‘Impossible music‘ the title track is a ludicrous sound collage; I don’t like it at all, but I smile when I hear it. I’ll maybe introduce a couple more tracks tomorrow, but I’m warning you, these are probably the best ones…Also, esther and I changed the CDs in our 101 CD jukebox. Here is a list of the CDs I put in there. I may annotate this at some point. It’s always nice to listen to a few tracks on random play after changing the CDs – lots of interesting tracks I never knew I had always seem to come on…

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Bloated

I’m exhausted after staying up late finishing most of my ‘impossible music’ last night. I will post some mp3s here at some point when I’m feeling less shy. I’ve never publicized this little vanity journal beyond telling one person about it, so it’s quite possible that I’m talking to myself here. Which is absolutely fine, don’t get me wrong…

Anyway, the records from yesterday were pretty excellent. I really enjoyed ‘The soul of’ Paul Mauriat‘; it’s all fun, upbeat orchestral versions of 60s soul classics. I could tell why ‘You keep me hangin’ on’ gets the most attention though – it opens with a deliciously mod sitar go-go sound which makes it just that little bit hipper…

The Francis Lai album (‘plays the compositions of….’), while on the quiet side, has some great arrangements and a very cool organ sound throughout. One outstanding track made me glad I bought it: ‘footprints on the moon‘, a superb, gently funky soundtrack piece with wordless vocals and Carpenters ‘we’ve only just begun’ style horns. The LP is from 1973, and it’s interesting to note the gradual change in atmosphere which seems to have occurred in orchestral LPs since the late 60s, when most my other favorites were recorded…I still really enjoy the sound on this one, but I am less into the mid-late 70s easy listening sound. Dig those disco LPs though…

I only took a quick listen to Walter Wanderley‘s ‘Kee-ka-roo’. It sounded excellent, with some groovy tracks like ‘canto d’ossanha’ and ‘music to watch girls by’. It turns out that this LP is from 1967, and is therefore before the ‘Popcorn’ album I mentioned yesterday. The actual track ‘kee-ka-roo’ is far less cool than the version on ‘Popcorn’, I would say. A very cool LP though; I think, bizarrely, that the only Walter LP on verve I don’t own now is ‘Rain Forest’, the most common one of all.

The Ramsey Lewis‘s ‘Mother nature’s son’ is quite superb, super-funky orchestral pop with electric piano and touches of moog. Definitely one of my favorites of the albums of his I have, and I like them all. Alas, someone outbid me in my attempt to buy 16 of his LPs in one ebay lot…

Finally, Gianni Marchetti‘s ‘The Wild Eye’ soundtrack was probably the most disappointing of my new acquisitions. Maybe I’m just pampered/bloated by the glut of ‘easy tempo’ compilations, but this didn’t really hold my interest. There were a couple of pretty nice wordless vocal soundtrack pieces, but either they weren’t so hot, or I wasn’t in the mood….

Anyway, I have to go design the cover for my silly little record.

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