Monday 19 March 2012

On The Corner With Miles Davis & The Tape-Beatles

In a Miles mode this afternoon - hanging out On The Corner, the one that stretches from '72 to '75, and that's a long corner, a long journey which, taken without a break, will drive you 'round the bend - but 'The Hen' and 'Mtume' are such momentous rhythm machines that it's hard to get off.

There are others too, but I'm on them now - and the beat goes on. Mix with a liberal sprinkling of The Tape- Beatles' Music With Sound and you have...something...my listening today, to be precise. Music With Sound is a plunderphonic masterpiece, as you probably know. And you can also guess the connection, perhaps, if you think of what Teo Macero did with Miles' music - yes - cutting it down to size, a size suited to the old LP format - and now we must praise the digital for allowing us to hear how long some of those jams were, where they went, how they ended, or never seemed to have an ending in sight, more to the point. Teo took the scissors to Miles, The Tape-Beatles took theirs to choice sampled speech from all over the place, splicing with every musical genre possible, so it seems. The results are captivating snapshots of various modes of thought, propaganda, advertising etc. It's no new trick, but they do it so well.

Lee Harvey John Oswald Eno Byrne Schaeffer Mixmaster Whoever have all employed/deployed the sample to great effect - hold on, how did JFK's assassin get in there? All this mixological trickery even has me thinking in a plunderphonic fashion wherein names come to mind that don't logically fit with the content. Plundergraphia is another issue. I may have made up that word. I'm currently working on a project which samples sentences. To this end, The Tape-Beatles are an inspiration - Miles has been and will continue to be an inspiration for reasons which any artist working in another form inspires - attitude, talent, product, spirit and so on.



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