I know what you mean about The Prodigy video (and even more so the Daft Punk sample source ones), it’s a bit disappointing to learn a track is almost entirely samples, but I think there is also a real art to picking those samples. If you’ve not been on it before check out whosampled.com and prepare to lose some time, lol.

I have to say I’m more impressed by artists who’s music is largely sample based but they twist them into entirely new forms (eg DJ Shadow and Future Sound of London) than just lifting a few loops wholesale though!

I've been in a 90s hip hop rut for the past couple years and I'm pulling myself out of it by making playlists of the original songs getting sampled (one great thing about good hip hop is that any given song or pair of songs tends to produce a pretty excellent playlist), and one thing I've discovered is that RJD2, a musician I was into in the mid-aughts during an instrumental hip hop phase, puts essentially zero effort into things; the best example I can think of there is "Bless The Telephone", which he "covered" from Labi Siffre in the funniest possible way.

Finding stuff like that will definitely give you a new appreciation for DJ Shadow (both, for what it's worth, were excellent live).

Also Labi Siffre: very good stuff.

Fun.

In case you didn't know: KEXP occasionally does breakdowns. Here they played every song sampled on Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. https://www.kexp.org/breakdown/paulsboutique/

Not my favorite band (they're fine), but I'll say that from Paul's Boutique through Hello Nasty, they're by far the best to generate playlists from.

Let's not dismiss RJD2's studio efforts entirely, he made Ghostwriter: https://parallaxatives.blogspot.com/2011/06/sample-spotting-...

and the whole of that first album, Deadringer, is great.

Deadringer's how I got into him. And I still like a lot of it! And I saw him at Abbey Pub and it was a fantastic show. But also: his cover of "Bless The Telephone" is just him playing a recording of "Bless The Telephone". :)

Glad you've been able to catch him live!

Oh, I only found this which is an actual cover - did he put the original on one of his releases too?

https://www.whosampled.com/cover/5048/RJD2-Making-Days-Longe...

Ghostwriter has always been one of my favorite songs.

DJ Shadow's Entroducing [0] is an amazing body of work if you think about the effort required to crate dig for all the samples. Truly mind boggling!

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endtroducing.....

Entroducing is one of the albums that got me into music production as a hobby. But to put some shine on some other great samplers while we're at it, The Avalanches' Since I Left You is also fantastic is comprised of around 3500 samples.

On top of the effort, the infinite patience, it's also one of the most amazingly musical things ever put together with electronics (one box!) Shadow stands in a class of one.

Have you ever heard the album, "Since I Left You" by The Avalanches?

The whole album is nothing but a medley, and it's one of my favorite albums of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBjuX1Gs5hU

Yes, really great album! I’ve not listened to it for years so thanks for the reminder

I'm a huge FSOL fan and I think what they did with sampling to produce albums like ISDN was ground breaking stuff.

Daft Punk not so much. Rather than composing the samples together they use the entire sample as the hook. Maaaybe they might speed it up a bit but that's usually it.

I definitely agree, but can’t argue with the end results that Daft Punk come up with (they’re not really my kind of genre but I don’t think you can argue they make great songs) and there aren’t that many artists out there making such catchy and successful sample based songs, so they definitely still have some skills which are quite unique (but maybe it’s more like deep music knowledge and recognising catchy hooks, than surgically splicing samples together)

For a journey into amazing music assembled from samples, have a listen to Amon Tobin.

I didn’t realise his stuff was all sample based. I’ve heard some of it and saw him live once, it’s a bit “frenetic” for me (I’m drawn to smoother more hypnotic stuff in general) but definitely cool!

I guess it depends which era/album you happen to catch; Long Stories (2019) is pretty chilled out, and the Chaos Theory soundtrack is somewhere in the middle.

What was it about the "Smack My Bitch Up" remake video that made you lose respect for the composition?

Remaking an existing hit song is much easier than making a new hit song. Making a hit song is very very very hard, even if you're using some samples along the way.

Same goes for Daft Punk. Those samples were all sitting there for the taking for years, but no one else put them together in such an electric way, supplemented perfectly with their own synths and drum machines, mixed brilliantly (there's a lot of unique and creative mixing and engineering going on) etc.

I did a little remake of the main loop of LCD Soundsystem's Someone Great. It wasn't particularly hard (once I had access to the right synths). But to have sculpted idea to use those sounds, notes, chords etc. all put together like that is brilliant.

Hearing that "cello" sample that Bush used made me feel like looking into a marble quarry and trying to see sculptures waiting to be released from the rocks.

It's really, really hard for me to disrespect Kate Bush or her music. She is a profound genius who strives to say something very specific with each song of hers, almost as if she's engaging her audience in a conversation, so I guess I tire less easily listening to her music than to most artists because of that.

I'm a big fan of Imogen Heap who is very similar to Kate Bush in that she brings together technical sophistication in composition, a love of technology in the service of art, and something deep and meaningful to say in each song. It's hard to conceptualize that much awesome incarnate in a single person.

If you like both of those artists, I'd suggest checking out Kimbra. She has heavy jazz influences and incorporates so much meaning into her music and videos. She does similar vocal layering to Imogen Heap and her live mixing of her own vocals is simply amazing.

Oklou's album "Galore" might also appeal to an Imogen Heap fan, with interesting self-made layering of vocals, electronica, some cathartic moments, and the videos are pretty darn good too.

Also recommend everything by Reggie Watts, a master of the vocal layering technique. His TED talk is one for the ages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc

I mean, there are a lot of artists whose fandom can say the same thing. I might feel the same way about Joe Strummer, or Glenn Mercer from the Feelies, or Elliot Smith. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying it's all pretty subjective. I don't actively dislike Kate Bush, but I'm not tuned into her the way you are, and so I get different vibes from her songs than you do --- like I said elsewhere on the thread, she has big-time Tina Belcher energy for me. I think the snowman song ruined me for her.

Was this the breakdown you saw?

"Making of "The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI

I feel like this makes me appreciate it more, not less.

>when I hear that Kate Bush song for the 90th time in a day because of Stranger Things.

Personally, I started listening to her because of the much smaller "wuthering heights fandom". Regardless of how people get into her, it's good to hear people are finally listening to her in the states.

At least in America, it feels like Running Up That Hill is more popular now than in the 80s. In the 80s, I never heard it on the radio and I had no friends who even knew of Kate Bush.

It was a staple of late-80s early-90s alt-rock radio, and appeared in a couple soundtracks.

I grew up in America and had the famous Kate Bush "leotard" poster on my bedroom wall. She wasn't as well known in the US because she didn't tour much outside of the UK. But she still had a cult of devoted fans in the US. Also, you have to remember that in the late 1970s the record companies were casting around for anything new that didn't sound like disco. That's how she got her first contract, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd sort of discovered her and helped her make her first demo, then presented it to his record company contacts. She's a genius artist and she deserves all the new attention she's getting.

I highly recommend watching Rick Beato's "What makes this song great" breakdowns.

I can't stand those because he never actually answers what makes them great...he just kind of analyzes the chords and tells you what they are, and plays some of the melodies. There's a lot of je ne sais qua about composing "great" music and I don't think I've seen a YouTube Explainer personality really able to capture that magic in their explanations.

The first 100+ videos in that series are pretty great. He was often able to obtain the master record and play each track individually. Hearing all these cool little details that usually get lost in the mix really changes your perspective on a song. He also goes over chords and stuff in these videos, but also adds some context and explains why these things work well together in a really simple way.

I feel like this has been missing in more recent videos though.

That's so true, and yet, I think your answer also explains why "what makes them so great videos" can work, in a way. The explanations given by Beato or whoever may be lacking in terms of the true why (is there really one?), but the enthusiasm of the presenter and the segments they choose to highlight can focus your attention on certain parts of the music and give you some of the insight they (apparently) have, even with it being unspoken. That's how it works for me anyway.

One thing I often notice is that if you listen to music with other people, you hear new things in it, because you are partially hearing it the way they do through reading their reactions.

He does but it's inferred.

Song writing is an art it's not like a technology where you can point to power usage and how v 2 is better than v1 to show the thing is now better, great.

He goes into great detail about the entire songs it's never just "point to a thing" and say "there it is". He'll describe how the choice of the wording, the chords, what scale e.g. "mixolydian vs dorian", how it all combines to make the song great.

He doesn't do any of that in his video about Running Up That Hill. Can you point to a favorite video of yours that I might be able to check out for more of what you described?

One of the (or maybe both) Nirvana ones are pretty good. He goes into how Cobain uses upper extensions/suspensions to give a melancholic feel. I think one of the Pearl Jam ones he throes the vocal chart on there too.

He's at his best when he's analyzing the vocal melody against the chord harmony (ie: they're using the #4 on the F for a Lydian feel to the 3rd on the Am)

Rick's "What Makes this Song Great?" does mention quite a lot maybe each is different maybe you'll like a different one. He has one on Rush song Limelight try this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-yUOlOC5M&t=877s

I bought Hounds of Love when it came out. It was rarely off of my turntable, and I still have a regularly played CD in the car. It kinda makes me a bit sad when an album as special as that (for me any way) is appropriated by advertising agencies or the likes of Netflix and then just ruined. Kinda in the same way many favourite but little known tunes are devalued when they're gotten hold of by advertising agencies. I've never been able to play Leftfield's Phat Planet after Guinness wrecked that for me.

Thankfully I don't listen to music radio or watch TV/Cable/Sat so I'm not being exposed to the oversaturation of once upon a time nice things.

Maybe time to re-visit The Dreaming :)

The Dreaming is off the hook wild, a truly experimental album that is still enjoyable as pop. Makes Peter Gabriel look timid :)

Never for Ever is really good too though. The range represented in those three consecutive albums (NfE/TD/HoL) is staggering.

Not really on the same scale but this exact thing happened to me with Pixies and "Hey" being used in the Suicide Squad.

Where is my mind on Fight club was a perfect use of the Pixies imo.

"Where Is My Mind" for me, but then, I'm just happy their good stuff still gets listened to.

I know there are people that feel really passionately about Kate Bush and I guess I just don't get it. She's fine! I respect the initiative she took in the 80s. But as a songwriter, for me at least, she has real Tina Belcher energy.

Could you briefly explain what a Tina Belcher energy is for those who haven't seen enough of "Bob's Burgers" to know the characters and their personalities? (I know that show has received quite a bit of acclaim and is almost certainly something I should watch, but I have a "no new scripted series on Fox" policy after how they handled Firefly, Futurama, Lucifer, and Terra Nova, so now wait until I'm sure a Fox series is going to have a proper ending before taking it up).

What I like about Kate Bush's songwriting is that many of her songs cover relations or are from viewpoints that are quite different from those usually found in popular music.

For example "Breathing", from the viewpoint of a fetus during or shortly after a nuclear war. "The Kick Inside"--consequences of incest. "The Infant Kiss"--Governess dealing with children possessed by the spirits of the dead previous governess and the dead lover of the previous governess.

The best way I can put it without going too deep down this rabbit hole is "benign adolescent prurience". She writes a lot of erotic zombie fiction.

Also: there are more good episodes of Bob's Burgers than there are of the Simpsons. You're seriously missing out.

Also I feel bad pointing this out but one thing fetuses don't do in the womb is...

She's just so weird! If you like Kate Bush a lot, and I sort of get why her weirdness is endearing, you'll like Tina Belcher. Just a lot of the same energy.

I'd heard that Kate wrote hundreds of songs before she was 17/18, many only released years later, so maybe that's where you're getting the "adolescent" vibe from.

I would argue that it's not about "songwriting" per se as much as a total commitment to expression that exceeds almost anybody else while still being pop. That, combined with her fantastic voice -- which is way too high for most pop and only works because she has a tremendous instrument and really wraps it around the lyrics. The fact that she sings over her whole range is both the hardest thing to get used to and one of the things that makes her a giant.

Finally, it's what she represents, which is an artist who was able, over and over again, to pursue her exact vision while giving zero fs what EMI wanted -- and was able to release top selling albums (in the UK) in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s.

She's probably the only pop artist that is worth engaging with as a genuinely mind-broadening experience that should be undertaken precisely becauseyou might not like it at first, like some classical or jazz.

Are you saying popularity ist devaluing music? How so?

> This is so good it almost makes me not want to throw up in my mouth when I hear that Kate Bush song for the 90th time in a day because of Stranger Things.

I love this song, but I wonder if I'm the only one who thought it was really out of place in that scene, even kind of forced in.

It too me out of the scene rather than keeping me in.

I understand your perspective and think it’s a totally valid response. I actually found the out-of-placeness sort of charming — it reminded me of being an adolescent and having opinions and feelings about music for the first time… while completely misunderstanding what the song was saying.

This is an interesting pair of takes because my problem with it was that it was just about the most on-the-nose, boring, predictable song they could have put there. I was just joking that they should have put Cloudbusting there instead, but it was pointed out that there's an early 90s version of that song that is clearly going into Season 8 of the show. Just pick any other song from the Chocolate War soundtrack instead. "I Have The Touch" would have worked even better.

UTAH SAINTS! UTAH SAINTS!

;P

(It would have been more fun if we'd spent the past month with clickbait like "What is Orgone Energy, Anyway?"

Right? It would be as good as anything else the show has induced in the culture. Maybe it explains the Upside Down or whatever. :)

You're probably being facetious, but season 5 was confirmed to be the last season when season 4 was announced.

I hope most of them die. There’s too many characters. The first season was fun but it just keeps growing and growing. It’s like the teenage angst MCU, each set of characters has to have a scene where they talk about their feelings with one another and it’s boring at this point.

It would be fun for them to do a And Then There Were None, but they’ll never do that.

Has to be the end, purely for time paradox avoidance: they are fast approaching the year that Winona Ryder stars in Beetlejuice.

Which scene? They used it in two key scenes.

Try any of Rick Beato's youtube "What makes this song great" (he also does KBush).

Fascinating -- What about the SmackMBU breakdown made you lose all respect? Love that Rage sample they used in that track -- iconic! Sampling/Curating/Slicing is an art in itself.