Tune of the Week: Stones

“Exile on Main St.” is a defining statement of The Rolling Stones. It incorporates not just blues but gospel, country and swing influences. The double album was recorded a variety of difficult circumstances: living abroad as tax exiles, drug dependence, miscellaneous work schedules and in-fighting. Despite these obstacles, the Stones achieve a work that both defines and transcends the genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll. There is a looseness and swagger to the proceedings that is more common among jazz musicians. The unique surroundings and atmosphere of the sessions lend the entire record a feel of a different reality; one which reflects the mentality of its musicians feelings and attitudes about life and the nature of the music they are creating. Here, in the album’s closer, you can hear what sounds like a culmination of all that the musicians and the listener have been through while on the sonic journey. The layered vocals and guitars create what sounds like a prayer at the alter of Rock ‘n’ Roll and all the forces that helped create it.

Tune of the Week: Godley and Creme

Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were an innovative multimedia duo from the 70s and 80s. After leaving the rock band 10cc they became a production duo. Their first album, “Consequences”, was a three LP box set that promoted their guitar accessory invention, the Gizmotron. On their third album, “Freeze Frame”, they experimented on the above track with what would commonly be referred to as “autotune”, a method of vocal pitch correction popular in the early 21st century.

In an interview for The Idler magazine in 2007, Kevin Godley explained how that song was realized:

Recently, I played I Pity Inanimate Objects from Freeze Frame and I remembered how and why we actually did that. The idea was driven by a new piece of equipment called a harmoniser. It's used in studios all the time these days as a corrective device to get performances in tune, but this early version came with a keyboard. You could put a sound through a harmoniser and if you wanted an instrument or voice to hit a certain note that it hadn't, you could play that note on the keyboard. So we got to thinking, 'Let's forget about singing for the moment. What happens if I vocalize these words in a monotone - do an entire song on one note - and get Lol to play my vocal on the harmoniser keyboard?' That was the experiment. It worked pretty well. Predated Cher's digital gurglings by a few years. I don't know where the lyric came from. Maybe because the harmoniser was inanimate.[3]

Tune of the Week: The Fall

The Fall were a post punk group from Manchester, UK centered around singer-songwriter Mark E. Smith. Mr. Smith was in attendence at the infamous Sex Pistols show in Manchester that help birth a rash of influential bands whose members all felt that “if they can do it, so can we.” Not only is Smith’s vocal delivery unique but his writing is also thoroughly modern, incorporating cut-up and Dada techniques. Having featured at least as many band members as years active (42), The Fall are one of rock’s most turbulent as well as prolific bands. By the time of Smith’s death in 2018 there were as many as 32 studio albums released by the group. Released in 1983, this song was their ninth single and features an appearance by an early consumer keyboard, the Casio VL-1. Smith lovingly refers to it as “the bloody blimey Space Invader” in his vocal performance, proving that his renown attitude could directed at inanimate objects as well those living beings trying to create with him.

Tune of the Week: Stereolab

Stereolab are a London based avant-pop/post-rock groop. Founded by Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier, they are known for mixing elements of krautrock and exotica music with ideologies taken from the Situationism, Surrealism and Marxism. In their thirty-plus years of existence their have been at least three distictly different incarnations of the Stereolab sound. However, a solid groove is always at the forefront of any of these mutations. In this tune from 1996 you can get your groove on while ruminating on the building blocks of modern society.

Tune of the Week: Paul White

Paul White is a London based music producer that specializes in off-kilter hiphop. Mr. White generally used way off the beat path samples for his beats. Here is a great example from his 2010 release, “Paul White & The Purple Brain”. The entire album is created with samples from Swedish psych-rock artist ST Mikael’s songs. The tripped out video utilizes footage from “The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship”, a Russian fairy tale translated and animated in the UK in 1990. Trip out to the funkiness!

Tune of the Week: This Heat

This Heat were a post-punk band from London that in short period of time created music that has had a lasting influence. With their polyrhythmic drumming and tonalities taken from disparate world music traditions they are very much the godfathers of the post-rock genre. The above track is taken from their second, and final, album “Deceit”. The record is very much of its time, concerned with the threat of nuclear war and its consequences on humanity as well as totalitarian governments. This track references the fallen Roman empire to make a political statement that rings far too true today.

Tune of the Week: Adam Ant

Adam Ant is a true individual. Very few musicians have even attempted to bring together as many disparate elements as he. In terms of music, he and collaborator Marco Pirroni fused tribal drumming, Latin horn, spaghetti western guitars and whistiling alongside new wave methods of production. The visual presentation of this musical synthesis was pirate clothing and Native American facepaint. On top of this was Adam’s unabashed boasting alongside a healthy dose of sex. After achieving success with this unique concoction came the requisite celebrity backlash in the press. Subsequent songs would reflect Ant’s thoughts on his status in the mainstream, often results in lyrics obsessed with his relationship with mass media and the music industry. Here is a perfect example of such a tune. The production really saves this from being a total ego-driven bore. The guitar and vocal layering are a technical marvel that elevates what could be a tedious bitchfest from someone talented and lucky enough to catch the public’s eye and imagination. Recorded in 1982, the second verse’s lyrics seem to prophesize the coming AIDS epidemic. Once again, Adam Ant seemed perhaps to be well ahead of his time.

Tune of the Week: Colin Newman

Colin Newman is a singer-songwriter best known as the frontman for the influential group Wire. Said group has formed, broken up and re-formed multiple times. Every time there’s been a breakup of the band Newman has taken the opportunity to expand his own creative horizons. His second solo album “provisionally entitled the singing fish” is a great example. On this release Newman casts away conventional notions of songwriting and adopts an Eno-esque method of mood creation through sound. Each song is entitled “Fish” with the corresponding track number. In the track above you can Newman create a swirling soundscape centered around a persistant drum pattern and simple melody sung without words. Sounds build on top of each other until the fade out at the end suggesting an endless cycle of aural mania. These pieces were orginally intended to be used as soundtrack pieces. I’m not sure anyone has ever answered that call. Hopefully in the future someone will!

Tune of the Week: Rain

“Rain” is a turning point in The Beatles discography to the psychedelic sound that would define their music for the next few years. Basically being a song about how people love to complain about the weather, it also is the first mainstream song to feature backwards vocals. It also features varied tape recording speeds that adds to the disorienting effect the song has. Additionally, Ringo Starr considers this is finest drum performance. This can easily be seen as a prelude to the far more psychedelic sounds that would emerge from the albums “Revolver”, “Sgt. Peppers…”, “Magical Mystery Tour” and the “White Album”. Supposedly there were three promo films shot by music video pioneer Michael Lindsay- Hogg. Below is an additional clip with lots of outtakes from the outdoor shoot. Sit back and enjoy the trip!

Tune of the Week: Twilight Circus

Twilight Circus Dub Sound System is reggae embodiment of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Moore. Orginally from Vancouver, Moore moved to the Netherlands in the 90s and joined the Legendary Pink Dots taking on drumming and bass duties. As his interest in dub music grew, so did a desire to create it. Soon Moore was opening for his own band as Twilight Circus, taking turns between playing drum and bass parts for sketches of songs he had recorded. After leaving the Dots, Moore began to take his reggae production more seriously. He began to create vocal version of his instrumentals and connected with many well known vocalists. Michael Rose, Ranking Joe, Luciano and Big Youth have all blessed the microphone for Twilight Circus productions. Ryan Moore’s work exemplifies the international, or should we say “outernational”, aspect of reggae in the present day. Here is some earlier work from Moore, showcasing the atmosphere he can create with the more critical aspects of dub music: drums, bass, keys and effects. Dub it!

Tune of the Week: OMD

Orchestral Manoeures in the Dark are a UK based post punk/synth pop band. Their journey took them from opening for Joy Division to being a poster band for the John Hughes movie generation. While their later material was much more digital and processed, their earlier tunes blended electronic with acoustic instrumentation. The Speak-And-Spell sampled “lyrics” show a clear Kraftwerk influence. The song’s grim message of the present day’s actions repercussions on future generations is still relevant today, unfortunately. While technologically it seems like a lifetime ago, thematically, 1983 doesn’t seem like that long ago at all.

Tune of the Week: Theremin

Gaudi is a London based musician who has been crafting pop, electronic and reggae music for four decades. As of late, he has been championing the first electronic instrument: the Theremin. His 2020 album, “100 Years of Theremin (The Dub Chapter)”, finds him taking dub tracks produced by the UK’s cream of the crop (Adrian Sherwood, Mad Professore, Prince Fatty, Dennis Bovell) and adding theremin leads on top. The above is a more recent self produced version of the Lee Perry produced classic “Bird in Hand”. The combination of roots reggae and the haunting tones of the Theremin help to create something new out of things drawn from the past.

Tune of the Week: Ultramarine

The early 90s were heady times for rave culture. On both sides of the Atlantic folks were getting down to the burgeoning electronic sounds until the early morning, sometimes in dusty warehouse spaces, sometimes in fields and farms. The words of Terrance McKenna reverberated in the space between the beats. Ultramarine, a production duo from Essex, England, created a kind of pastoral electronic music. Similar to the melodic tunage of club and rave favorites 808 State and featuring the tools of the trade: funky breakbeats, arpeggiated synths and vocal samples, their songs sound wholly of their time, however Ultramarine’s music recreates the feeling of having been dancing all night and witnessing a new day dawning.

Tune of the Week: Trans Am

Trans Am is a US based rock band that is a special blend of serious and goofy. Their style is very much in the “post rock” vein, in that they synthesize their sound from a wide variety of influences (krautrock, prog and classic rock) and that a lot of their songs are instrumental. In the above tune we can hear them creating something of a sequel to Kraftwerk’s “Computer World”, but with a decidedly tongue-in-cheek attitude. However, they have released albums that deal with pretty heavy societal issues such as their early 00s LP “Liberation”, released during the George W. Bush administration. They are a very tight live band, but they can also be seen eating a slice of pizza while playing one handed solos. This mix of serious talent and an ability to not take the proceedings so seriously make them one of the better bands from the indie rock scene. Below is an example of their live abilties, captured at a show in which yours truly was present. Enjoy!

Tune of the Week: Amon Tobin

Amon Tobin is a Brazilian-English electronic music producer who specializes in sound design. Much like graphic design, sound design involves taking many disparate elements to create a cohesive new statement. One of the building blocks of Tobin’s designs is the manipulation of samples. In his early days this would entail arranging jazz samples over drum and bass style breakbeats. In time, his sampling and layering of those samples would become much more complex and emotive. Here is an example of him taking many bits from the world of jazz and creating another, more electronic, world.

Ninja Tune labelmate Kid Koala created a routine with this song, along with a samples from the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, creating yet another distinct sample-based tune. This was a staple of his turntable shows for many years. It starts around the 17 minute mark. Dig!

Tune of the Week: Eno & Byrne

In 1980 David Byrne and Brian Eno were on a break between recording the Talking Heads’ albums “Fear of Music” and “Remain in Light”. They didn’t take much of a break as they proceeded to create what would become a precursor to a slew of beat and sample based albums to come for decades. The result, “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”, took spoken and sung vocal samples from all over the world and placed them on top of funky and disjointed rhythms created by the duo. In this example you can hear the call of a Lebanese mountain singer mix with the funkier-than-thou vibes of bassist Busta “Cherry” Jones. Sample based production would take off from here, popping up in the realms of techno, hiphop and pop music.

Tune of the Week: Ruins

Ruins is a Japanese rock duo often associated with the noise rock scene of their motherland, but are more in line with progressive rock. The group is helmed by drummer and songwriter Tatsuya Yoshida. He has been joined by a multitude of guitarists, as well as a saxophonist for the project Sax Ruins. The music often involves super complicated rhythm structures and whiplash changes. The lyrics are in a language of Yoshida’s own creation. The above tune, from the 1992 release “Burning Stone”, features guitarist Ryuichi Masuda. Masuda would play a six string guitar which would allow him to access lower octives and mimic the playing of an otherwise absent bass player. In concert Masuda would often incorporate a looping effects pedal to lay down a bass part and then solo his upper register guitar parts. Along with Yoshida’s seemingly inhuman drumming the duo would easily create the sense of a quartet in action! Enjoy the insanity. Embrace the insanity!

Tune of the Week: Tom Waits

Tom Waits is a US based singer-songwriter that defies easy categorization. His songs generally tell tales of desperate people in desperate times. Dying, decay and leaving are common themes. The musical style of these songs can range from traditional piano and voice arrangements to jazz combos to industrial noise. If there is anything to be expected from Tom Waits it is the unexpected.

The song above is from one of Waits’ more bizarre albums, 1987’s “Franks Wild Years”. The album is made up of songs from a play created by Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and produced by Chicago’s esteemed theater company Steppenwolf. Waits takes on many different character and voices throughout the album, as evidenced here by his rough falsetto. Despite the slightly deranged delivery on the official release, this song seems to have been extensively covered, most notably by mainstream jazz vocalist Diana Krall.

Toon of the Week: Carl Stalling

Soundtracks, like cinematography, production design and audio production, are elements of film that should seamlessly integrate with a whole work. While some outstanding examples can stand up on their own, they are generally works that must be appreciated within the context of a bigger work. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of underappreciated accomplishments. This is perhaps most so in the case of scoring for cartoons. These short films are generally considered a less artform due to their primary audience being children. However, great artists and craftspeople are required to create these complicated films. One of the grandfathers of cartoon scoring was Carl Stalling. Stalling is most known as the primary composer for Warner Brothers’ Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes series. Every week for 22 years he would compose, arrange and conduct a score for a 50 piece orchestra. These scores often had to include whiplash changes in tone and color, as well as popular and classical music references. All of this had to fit within a 5-7 minute piece. Above you can hear how it could require multiple takes for the music for just one shot in a cartoon to turn out just right. Below you can hear Stalling turning the lampooning on his own work. It’s facinating to hear this kind of music out of its context, but you can also check out what it’s like within the cartoon as well.

Tune of the Week: ISP

The mid 90s saw Hiphop taking a very commercial turn. What was once an expression of inner city turmoil and struggle had become a haven for big money deals and materialism. While the majority of the attention paid to the genre was focused on the feud between New York City and Los Angeles, a new take on an original form of Hiphop expression was evolving in the Bay Area of California. This turned out to be the genesis of what would come to be referred to as Turntablism.

While Hiphop had come to evolve from Bronx DJs who found breaks in songs and looped them utilizing two copies of the same record, Bay Area DJs extended this practice to creating whole songs by manipulating tiny portions of songs into something new. Breaks would be dissected into individual drum sounds to create new beats. Sound effects would be replayed to create patterns on top, often creating new meanings for words and phrases.

The Invisible Skratch Piklz became the umbrella name for the group of Turntablists that would come together and pioneer this new artform. Separately and together their members won so many DJing titles that they were banned from subsequent competitions worldwide. Members such as DJ Disk, Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike have all gone onto play in much larger contexts, playing concert venues around the world billed as musicians and playing to large audiences.

Bay Area hiphop impresario Billy Jam recognized the innovations happening behind the decks in his own back yard early and began documenting jam sessions. Here is a bit of one of those jams in which you can here aural chaos being shaped into something more musical before your very ears.