Lassigue Bendthaus : Superbad (Soul Substitute)

Lassigue Bendthaus is one of the many many nom de plume's for Uwe Schmidt (also know as Atom Heart and Señor Coconut), a German musician who dabbles primarily in electronic music. In the mid-90's he developed his own software that performs "vocal simulation based on vocal resynthesis generated from original vocal raw material". So, what I take from that is, the software samples his vocals, chops them up, then reconstructs them, which introduces all sorts of interesting digital artifacts. It's along the lines of "glitch" music, where the digital edges and errors of electronics and samples, rather than being fixed or smoothed over, are embraced and used as the very source material for the piece. The vocals are chopped into tiny phonemes which are repeated and stretched providing a very robotic sound.

"Super Bad" is an early James Brown original, and as such is an extremely analog piece of hard funk. One of the cool things about Uwe's version is that, even though the song is completely reliant on digital technology, constructed completely in the realm of the electronic, from the programmed drums to the android vocals to the synthesized horns, he's managed to keep the organic funk of the original. Even with all the bleeps and bloops, it rocks, and though it doesn't have the sheer sweat-soaked fury of the original, it could easily wind up a dance floor.

The album, Pop Artificielle, consists of ten covers of a wide variety of musicians, from Donovan to Prince to ABC (which I almost posted instead), all done in this very digital vein. It's an excellent album and a fun listen.

[You can listen to Lassigue Bendthaus' "Superbad (Soul Substitute)" by navigating to the post "Song057" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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John C. Reilly : Starman

Strangely enough, the music for the movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is pretty top notch. John C. Reilly can really sing and the writers did a great job of parodying a variety of musical styles and clichés throughout the film.

This tune is a fine example, skewering both the disco movement and the of washed up and B-list musicians and actors who hopped the disco gravy train.  You've got a tremendous variety of square going on here. You've got the past-the-prime musician trying to be hip.  You've got him delivering a peculiarly smarmy loungey disco song (I especially love the stilted way he sings "let the children boo-gie"). Then you've got the song choice itself. "Starman" was relatively minor hit for David Bowie from 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, a slightly wacky, tripped out number about a cool rock 'n' roll alien communicating with the children over the radio. It's chock full of hipster language, like "hazy cosmic jive", "far out" and "blow our minds", plus clear drug innuendo.  It's a bizarre choice, and the whole thing is laughably weird, in a reality TV kind of way.

And John really nails it. It's an exact recreation of a whole slew of records that came out in the late 70's. Plus, it's a damn good cover of a great song. The disco vibe is perfect, with the traditional funk bass and chicken scratch guitar. John's delivery is just stellar.  His vocal is solid, but he keeps it decidedly unfunky over the funk. It's a fun tune.

You can find John's performance of "Starman" on the soundtrack for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

[You can listen to John C. Reilly's "Starman" by navigating to the post "Song051" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Celia Cruz : Yo Viviré

We had landed in Orlando and were heading into DisneyWorld. I thought, as I rarely do, let's see what's on the radio. But rather than flip on the FM dial and tune into the same homogenous satellite-driven pap, we'd scan the AM dial to see what showed up. I turned it on, tuned it up, and lo and behold, out of the speakers came this driving latin beat, distinctly Spanish, but also vaguely familiar. We're cruising over the blacktop, the sun is shining, everyone's excited about Disney, and the rhythm and horns are just lifting me up. I'm driving and grooving (at the same time, which always makes my wife nervous), and suddenly, as the strings crest over the chorus, I realize, "Holy shit, that's 'I Will Survive'!" and I'm catapulted into sheer giddiness.

Yes, a killer upbeat ass-kicking salsa version of the 70's disco classic. There's not much else to say about it, except that it keeps the fiery spirit of the original, but it's even spicier with the latin rhythms, the horns and the chanted Spanish background vocals. If you're not dancing around the room while you listen to this, you may not have a soul.

Celia Cruz is apparently pretty popular in the latin music community and released a flood of albums between 1958 and 2003, when she passed. You can find this cover on her 2000 release, Siempre Vivire.

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