Tune(s) of the Week: The Residents

The Residents are an avant garde arts group from Louisiana that specialize in conceptual musical recordings and performances. In the 1979 the group came up with the concept of making very short, jingle-like songs. They decided to strip back their compositions to about a minute apiece, following these four points:

Point one: Pop music is mostly a repetition of two types of musical and lyrical phrases, the verse and the chorus.

Point two: These elements usually repeat three times in a three minute song, the type usually found on top-40 radio.

Point three: Cut out the fat and a pop song is only one minute long. Then record albums can hold their own top-40, twenty minutes per side.

Point four: One minute is also the length of most commercials, and therefore their corresponding jingles.

Point five: Jingles are the music of America.

The result was “The Commercial Album”, a collection of 40 one minute songs. Featuring secret guest appearances by likes of David Byrne and Brian Eno, The Residents showed how that they could tackle traditional song writing as well as they could long-form conceptual pieces.

To promote the album the group paid for 40 advertisement slots on the most popular rock radio station in their native San Francisco. The station ended up playing the entire album over the course of three days. This ended up getting them additional promotion through an editorial in “Billboard” magazine in which the campaign was questioned as being art or advertising. I think it is easy to see it as both.

Here are three pieces, making up the equivalent of one pop song:

Tune of the Week: Reload

Mark Pritchard is an absolute electronic music chameleon. He has created tunes in a multitude of styles under a myriad of aliases. He has commandeered techno, house, trip hop, footwurk, electro and, as can be heard here, IDM. This song from the early 90s still shines due to its structrual and sonic accomplishments. On display are distinct movements and dynamics amongst the various layers of sounds to come in and out of the mix. A breathtaking accomplishment, regardless of vintage!

Tune of the Week: Push Button Objects

Push Button Objects was a part of a Miami based movement in electronic music at the turn of the 21st century. Suddenly, Europe was not the only hotbed of cutting edge beats and soundscapes. Drawing comparisons to RJD2 and Prefuse 73, PBO created skittering rhythms and interesting synth tones on top boom bap hiphop beats. Perhaps due to some contractual BS typical of the Chocolate Industries label, Push Button Objects ceased to release anything shortly after gaining positive momentum. Hopefully we’ll get some of these funky robotic beats sometime in the future!

Tune of the Week: Squarepusher

Squarepusher, aka Tom Jenkinson, is a bass player and electronic music producer from Chelmsford, UK. He is a beat programming virtuoso, if ever there was one. Here he creates what sounds like an alien jazz combo. He manages to make drum break editing sound like a jazz drummer taking a solo. All of this is created on a minimal home studio set-up. Incredible!

Tune of the Week: Hal Wilner

Hal Wilner was a unique record producer who specialized in tribute albums and concerts. He amassed an amazing list of musicians to perform at times irreverent renditions of tunes from songbooks from Thelonious Monk, Kurt Veil, Nino Rota and even Disney films. One of his most unique creations was “Weird Nightmare": Meditations on Mingus”, a tribute to both Charles Mingus and Harry Partch. Wilner combined compositions as well as prose Mingus had written and combined it with the instruments and tonalities of Partch to create an unsettling sonic landscape that crystallized the off-kilter mentalities of these two musical geniuses. Here is a piece featuring two of Partch’s instrument creations alongside Robbie Robertson reading a story from Mingus’ autobiography, “Beneath the Underdog”. The line about how “last year seems like ten years ago” really rings true in 2020.

Tune of the Week: Tones on Tails

Tones on Tail was a band created out of the ashes of the goth unit Bauhaus. Operating without members Peter Murphy and David J, they created music that was every bit as weird and varied as their preceding band. Perhaps less sinister, their music still had that unsettling feeling that also made you want to dance. “Lions” was the fourth of their six singles and displays an ample reggae influence. With its spare arrangement, one could argue an even more dub emphasis. Like a lot of Bauhaus songs, the lyrics are fairly opaque and not worthy of much investigation. However, the haunting and catchy quality of the tune brings to mind a similarly stripped back approach Depeche Mode utilized on their super-popular release Violator. Put on some black clothes, eye liner and skank to the rhythm!

Tune of the Week: Eric B. & Rakim

Eric B & Rakim are a Long Island, NY based hiphop duo. Forming in 1986, they considered a part of the genre’s golden age. Rakim is often referred to as the greatest MC of all time. Eric B’s beats and scratches are true to the original New York style of doubling up breaks and sample stabs. Rakim’s closing line “You thought I was a doughnut/You tried to glaze me” is still classic. Just some fun, old school vibes to try to calm the pre-election jitters. VOTE!

Tune of the Week: Bauhaus

“Paranoia, Paranoia” is as good a Halloween tune as we can think of. It was a b-side to Bauhaus’ equally unsettling single “Lagartija Nick”, an upbeat ditty about Satan. Here the band take disparate sections of what appears to be their song “Silent Hedges” and mixes it with a field recording of them messing about, perhaps before getting onstage somewhere. The disjointed nature of the mix lends itself to an uneasy listen. Perfect listening for a dark day!

Tune of the Week: The Cure

From their first single, “Killing an Arab”, The Cure always had a dark, nihilistic side to them. Four years later the sinister depressing vibes came to a head with their fourth album, “Pornography”. The tone is set immediately in this, the first song from the album. Drum machines rarely sound this menacing. Guitars wail and wobble, seemingly on the brink of losing all control. This sentiment is crystallized by the opening lyrics: “It doesn’t matter if we all die”. Perfect stuff for this time of year (in the Northern Hemisphere)!

Tune of the Week: VU

“The Gift” is a musical piece of storytelling by The Velvet Underground. It’s a Stephen King-esque tale written by Lou Reed in his college days and recited by bandmate John Cale. The driving background music adds to the macabre mood. Nice stuff for this time of the year in the northern hemisphere!

Tune of the Week: Rockit & Turntablism

Since his early 20s, Herbie Hancock had a hand in the shaping of the sound of modern jazz. By the mid 1980s his career needed a boost. He connected with genre blender extraordinaire Bill Laswell to help bring his sound into the present. Laswell took him to a HipHop party in New York City where Hancock could see firsthand how DJs would manipulate music with records and their hands, creating new works. Incorporating this new art form resulted in one of his biggest hits: “Rockit”. At the next Grammy awards ceremony Hancock performed the song, featuring Grandmaster D. ST on the turntables. The television broadcast of this performance is one of the cornerstones of genre of Turntablism. Many of the innovators of the art form to come later in the 1990s site this performance as a main motivator to get into scratching. Nearly 40 years later this stuff is reeeeally freshhh!

Tune(s) of the Week: King Tubby

Osbourne Ruddock, aka King Tubby, was a true craftsman-as-artist. A TV and radio repairman turned audio engineer and studio owner, Tubby changed the course of music history by accident. While cutting a single for Duke Reid, Tubbs forgot to mute the vocal channel for the instrumental B, or “version”, side. Having the vocal cut in and out seemed like a pretty big mistake and Tubby was ready to recut the single but Reid said he’d take it as-is. When the record was played at the next big dance the B-side received a grand ovation. It is said to have been played several times in a row that night, garnering a “pull up”, “rewind” or “forward” after every play. A new kind of tune had been born and the genre of “Dub’ had subsequently been born. This subtractive mode of composition would go on to influence every mode of electronics-based music production in the future.

Here is a much later example of King Tubby’s dub work. Not only do the vocals of the original single come in and out, but wartime sound effects bombard the listener while everything in the mix has been heavily effected. This is heavy-duty dub, not some weakheart business!

Here is the original production, before the devastation:

And a bonus DJ cut by the man like Jah Stitch riding a much more stripped back version of the dub:

Salute to the KING!

Dread out!

Tune of the Week: Echo and the Bunnymen

Echo & The Bunnymen are a seminal post-punk band from Liverpool, UK. Fronted by the tremendous guitar work from Will Sergeant and the haunting lyrics and vocals of Ian McCulloch their sound had all the mania and doom and gloom of your standard post-punk band. Their not-so-secret weapon was their drummer, Pete de Freitas. De Freitas’ patterns and fills were always inventive and physical, no matter the tempo. Not half bad for a band that started out with a drum machine for a time keeper! Galloping rhythms and expertly timed rolls are on display here, as well as a wicked guitar solo section that blurs the lines between the strings of a violin and guitar. All of that leads us to an ovation-worthy climax. Makes you think what they were thinking of when they dreamt THAT up.

Tune of the Week: Wordsound

Wordsound was a record label run by Skiz Fernando out of Brooklyn, NY in the mid 90s to early 00s. in very New York form, they specialized in producing an underground hybrid of dub reggae and hiphop. Musical shape shifter Bill Laswell served as mentor and his Orange Music Sound Studios served as a meeting ground of the minds. Fernando’s Roots Control alias sets the tone for the whole scene extremely well: heavy bass lines, melodica and dusty hiphop beats. It creates perfect soundtrack for brushing off the dust and sidling up to the bar to roll and light one up. Dread out.

Tune(s) of the Week: DMZ

Digital Mystikz is a dubstep production and DJ duo from Croydon, UK. They have helped define the dubstep sound and experience through their influential club night, DMZ. They coexist as yin and yang type halves: Mala producing more meditative and grooving tunes while Coki focuses his energy into more frenetic, up-beat productions. They have released songs as their individual songs under their own monikers but on occasion will put out tunes as Digital Mystikz. One 12”, released around Christmas-time 2010 on their own DMZ label, perfectly illustrates the two sides of the Mystikz coin:

Mala’s tune “Education” utilizes his distinct shuffling rhythms with cinematic synths straight out of the Blade Runner soundtrack. Add on top of that what sounds like Wailing Souls sample and you have an epic Mala Mystikz production.

Now, flip the record over:

An ominous, funhouse type organ sound intros a song featuring Coki’s signature crazed oscillating synth tones, hard beats and ruffneck dancehall samples. This style has been imitated to death, serving as something of a template for a lot of what people traditionally refer to as “dubstep” but is also known as “brostep”. However, no one makes tunes like Coki. His method of mangling synthesizer sounds and banging beats always gets a dubstep crowd moving and yelling for more.

The Digital Mystikz paradigm may not make the most logical sense, but they cover all of the necessary bases to insure that the dubstep levels remain at 100% at all times. Salute!

Tune of the Week: Luke Vibert

Luke Vibert is a electronic musician jack-of-all-trades. Since 1993 he has been consistently releasing music in a myriad of styles under mulitiple monikers. As Plug and Amen Andrews he makes drum and bass/jungle music. As Wagon Christ he releases trip hop. As Kerrier District he creates house music. As Ace of Clubs he focuses on acid house. What is prevalent across all of these differing works is a palpable sense of personality and a great degree of humor. This track is taken from his 1997 album “Big Soup”, the first released under his actual name. It serves as a kind of concept album devoted to the concept of the future circa the 1960s. It’s the perfect example of Luke’s mastery of sample manipulation and collage. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em and vibe(rt) out!

Tune of the Week: Eugene McDaniels

Eugene McDaniels was an incidiary singer-songwriter of the turbulent 60s and 70s. This song comes from his second of two albums he cut for Atlantic records which focus on social inequality. “Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse” was apparently heard by then US Vice President Spiro Agnew who called Atlantic and asked them not to release it. Unfortunately, this song still remains socio-politically relevant. It was also prominently sampled in the 90s by The Beastie Boys. Listen up and stay vigilant!

Tune of the Week: RevCo

Revolting Cocks is an industrial music super group consisting of members of such acts as Front 242, Ministry, Fini Tribe, Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails. Like most of Al Jourgensen’s projects RevCo devolved in more dumb-rock territory over the years, but their initial tracks are still pretty magical. Alongside Richard23’s vocals and Luc Van Acker’s bass is the sound of the Fairlight CMI sampler. Apparently no one could figure out how to get a sequence of anything over four measures going on the extraordinarlly expensive synth but the results create a hypnotizing drone that keeps you locked in for over ten minutes. Additionally, the three men’s heads used to represent the band are relatives of one of the owners of the label Wax Trax!

Tune of the Week: Autechre

Autrechre is a UK electronic music act consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth. Alongside Aphex Twin they are considered the posterchildren for the IDM genre. Inspired by acid house, electro and hiphop, the duo create skittering beats and abstract soundscapes. Their music can be hectic, serene, moody and uplifting- sometimes all within one composition. Here is their first official music video and the directorial debut of visual arts master Chris Cunningham. Get your freak on!

Tune of the Week: 808 State

808 State are an electronic music act from Manchester, UK. They cross the lines between Chicago acid house, rave music and hiphop. They have collaborated with Bjork, Ian McCullough and Bernard Sumner. Fans of theirs include Morrissey and Aphex Twin. While they had breakout success with their single “Pacific”, this tune incapsulates their peak era very well. Rave on!