Audio Drag (slight reverse)

MAGIC’S SONGS OF THE WEEK

ok so the shoe is on the other foot this week, we are pitching UP instead of down….

Prince as his alter ego ‘Camille’. Not one of my fave prince songs (too much distorted guitar riffing – though I do love the backwards strings keyboards, and hey, I was just very surprised to find any Prince on youtube, I thought he had de-princed the entire tinterwebs).

He did a whole album as ‘her’ , and despite it having a catalogue number and everything, it was never released. Instead all the tracks bar one made it on to other albums / projects / singles…this was 1987, Prince’s bob-dylan-in-65′ uber-year of hyper-productivity.

ANYHOO:

Not actually audio drag, or voice treatment, just a simple case of misunderstanding on my part.

‘Svefn-g-englar’ was released in 1999, back in the days before you knew everything about a band before they ever put anything out.

I loved the e.p. and just assumed the high angelic voice was that of a lady. Went to see the band at Trinity in Bristol, was a bit confused they seemed to be all boys, then Jonsi opened his mouth and I realised my mistake…

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posted by MAGIC

Two nights of MAGIC + DREAMS

We are absolutely thrilled to announce, well damn it, a lot of stuff.

First:

EKOCLEF, a collaboration between Ekoplekz and Bass Clef, will release an album on the 11th of October.

It’s called ‘tapeswap’ in honour of it’s origins, and I hope you will all like it very much.

And second and thirdly;

together with the one and only Qu Junktions we will be putting on TWO nights,

featuring Ekoclef, Some Truths, and Pipe Dreams all performing live.

At Cafe Oto in London, Friday the 21st of October

And FAG studios in Bristol, saturday the 22nd of October

EXCITEMENT ENSUES

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Posted by MAGIC

It’s monday morning

so here to cheer you
is a picture of Kate Bush playing the Fairlight CMI:

(I WANT ONE)
(a fairlight that is)
(one day when I have an entire spare room and several hundred thousand english pounds)

and, for lunchtime reading perhaps, is her talking about recording The Dreaming, fairlights and all. Good times.

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TONIGHT and some words

 

Dear friends, just a gentle jog that tonight is the debut london outing of Some Truths (I’m terrified – had 2 nightmares about the gig going wrong – 2!).

Plus the loverley KEK-W of thee mighty Hacker Farm has posted some very nice words and the two of us talking over some truths, the whole truth and some other stuff here.

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posted by MAGIC

 

 

Audio drag

MAGIC’S SONG OF THE WEEK

Well, actually there are several this week.

MAGIC’S SONGS OF THE WEEK

The starting point was a Laurie-Anderson youtube odyssey I clicked around on, one happy afternoon.

Amazing studio footage:

 

Which brings me to the ‘voice of authority’, also known as MOM,
Laurie’s sometime alter-ego.

 

 

She’s also referred to it as ‘audio drag’, a simple pitching-down that straight away gives her an odd robotic masculine sound. But she does much more with it than that.

Strange at-home version with added Bragg (!):

 

 

Which made me try and think of other examples…Karin Andersson from The Knife of course -

Here’s disturbing skit ‘The Cop’:

 

 

And the magnificently wierd ‘We Share Our Mother’s health’:

When I first heard this, knowing The Knife were a brother-sister combo, I assumed she sang the first half and he sang the second. Nope, both her:

 

 

Shooting back in time to pre-Laurie, Annette Peacock made a bizarre voice-warped album.

Not the recently reissued ‘I’m The One’ (I find that a little to smooth funk to be honest) but ‘REVENGE’ by the Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show, in which she feeds her voice through an Arp synthesizer:

 

 

Not strictly ‘drag’ I know, but she has plenty fun on some of the tracks playing different characters.

Which lead me on surely surely to Kate Bush. Couldn’t think of a specific instance in which she used a pitch change, although I am sure there is one.

The backing vocals at the end of ‘Get Out Of My House’ which morph in to donkeys, are a great touch in one of my favourite none-more-mental KT songs:

 

 

Part 2 next week, got a few more in the bank - but help me out here, who else did I miss?

 

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posted By MAGIC

 

IT’S BECAUSE

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posted by MAGIC

direct film sunday

If there is someone who truly can evoke both MAGIC and DREAMS

then it’s Len Lye:

 

 

that totally kills almost every single music video ever made. 53 years ago. to hell with computers.

 

 

In the dark days before the internet blessed and cursed us with the ability so watch anything ever made, any time we want…

twenty-something years ago, in a revision-avoiding inspired bout of insomnia, I was watching some late night animation special on channel 4….

some of these crazy jewelled bursts of genius and joy were on…for years after I couldn’t tell if I dreamed them or if they really existed:

 

 

luckily for us all, it turned out they were real actual films.

Dig it.

 

(really actually like the way the signal path for this file has corrupted and changed the colours and the coding! From film > copied probably from the TV to a VHS > then badly compressed by youtube (what a journey))

 

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posted by MAGIC

 

Coseph Jonrad – paper round tapes volume five

Dear friends,

troubled times here in hackney but the show must go on, those papers won’t deliver themselves…

Volume five finds us still in greatest hits territory. I have to admit that hacking, slashing, looping and psychedelisizing my way through the original album has reingnited my love of their productions – not the songs so much maybe – but the sounds. I’m pretty sure they were heavily blazing, whilst topping the charts. Impressive multitasking.

Here’s a video for “art for art’s sake”:

 

 

Here’s a couple of tracks to stream or download FOR FREE:

 
‘I’m mandy fly me’>>>
 

 
‘I’m not in love’>>>
 

 
 

As usual, the album is available on cdr for £5 with FREE postage in the UK or europe, just email:
magicanddreamsmusic (AT) gmail.com

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posted by MAGIC

 

night on mare street

Horrible, horrible, yesterday.

Riot on my doorstep, helicopters overhead.

But worse was to come today: my thoughts go out to the friends, ex-colleagues, labels I used to look after, to everyone in the world of independent music, who will be affected by the PIAS / Sony DADC Enfield warehouse fire. Absolutely awful.

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posted by MAGIC

M+D music factory

 

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Posted by MAGIC