Song of the day: #37 Isaiah Toothtaker – "Intruder"

i alluded to Song(s) of the Year in my Jacques Greene post the other day, and this is another of my definite contenders. i keep returning to "Intruder" over and over.


Apart from just being a great record, part of what's so fun about "Intruder" is just how many layers of détournement have gone into making it what it is. In case anyone doesn't know the provenance of the music in this song, here's a brief memeology.

First there was Antoine Dodson, who went viral in July last year after a shit-talking interview with his local TV station in which he warned his sister Kelly's attempted rapist what was coming to him.


Then The Gregory Brothers, apparently a country/soul group but pretty much known for their novelty "Auto-Tune the News" series of YouTube videos, caught wind of the musical cadences of Antoine's voice (and what Wikipedia calls his "flamboyant delivery") and autotuned parts of his and his Kelly's interview and exposition from the news anchor, into an R&B song, "Bed Intruder Song".


This went even more viral, getting to number 89 in the Billboard charts on iTunes downloads alone and racking up, so far, 86 million YouTube hits. Détourne 1: from bad news story to pop smash.¹ Then other performers started to do their own versions, 2,500 of them by this time last year, ranging from rubbish (the singer out of Paramore and someone from kiddy-punks New Found Glory; the human sigh that is Dane Cook) to ace (Afua's bass-based snippet; the shamisen arrangement). Then there's this brilliant version by the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Marching Band. Détourne 2: from pop smash to parade-ground anthem.


It was probably inevitable that there'd end up being a rap interpolation of the theme, but we're lucky that it was done by someone with the skills of Isaiah Toothtaker and Wavves drummer Jacob Safari, who produced "Intruder", and that they recognised that the marching band's huge, powerful version was the best (to sample, or otherwise), and furthermore that all the song lacked was a tonne of skittering drum machines and an MC as charismatic as he is casually menacing.

Toothtaker's repurposing of the song as a snitches-get-stitches warning is détourne 3, from light-hearted YouTube meme (albeit excellently done) back to urgent street-level threat. This is only emphasised by an excellent split-screen video, in which Toothtaker's performance to camera is mixed with a creepy animation of a clenching and unclenching hand, and scenes of shootouts, car accidents, fist fights and bits of Mark Hejnar's 1996 film Affliction² (particularly Turbo Tom's eye-gouging, and hilariously unhinged gun nut Full Force Frank) edited together by experimental filmmaker Walter Gross. And the cycle is complete, with the salvaging of something concretely decent from a shifting sea of memetics. It'd be interesting to know if Antoine Dodson, who was able to move his family out of the projects from his share of the "Bed Intruder Song" proceeds, has heard this, and if so what he made of it.

¹ Although the questionable power relations of affluent white New York hipsters bolstering their rep off the back of the sincere anger of a wronged black housing project resident didn't go unnoticed. NYU music professor Jason King told NPR, "It has a really good hook, but it's problematic, too. There's a way in which the aesthetics of black poverty—the way they talk and they speak and they look — sort of becomes this fodder for humor without any interest in the context of the conditions in which people actually live", while comedian/Onion web editor Baratunde Thurston elaborated that "As the remix took off, I became increasingly uncomfortable with its separation from the underlying situation. A woman was sexually assaulted and her brother was rightfully upset. People online seemed to be laughing at him and not with him (because he wasn't laughing), as Dodson fulfilled multiple stereotypes in one short news segment. Watching the wider Web jump on this meme, all but forgetting why Dodson was upset, seemed like a form of ‘class tourism.’ Folks with no exposure to the projects could dip their toes into YouTube and get a taste."
² Worth a watch if you're into mental underground/transgressive culture, but probably only once.

Song of the day: #34 Xrin Arms – "Xr World"

Been meaning to do a post about Xrin Arms (pron. "You're in Arms" or i guess "Urine Arms", if you like) for ages now, and the release of a new video for "Xr World", the first track to be released off his long-awaited Human Hallucinogen album, seems like a good time.

Xrin is the one-man project/alias of Anthony Vincent, originally from California but more often found spreading his caffeinated gospel all over the States on tour. He's also found the time to release over a dozen albums in the last few years, whether solo as Xrin Arms and Goldz Field, together with frequent collaborator p.Wrecks, or part of the group Heavy Barrelz with Wrecks and Guttah Face.


Perhaps the most surprising aspect of XA for the uninitiated is his wildly contrasting musical styles: basically, you're either going to get swaggering, gritty hip-hop or ferocious, balls-out, electronic-inflected grindcore/digital rock, both of them topped off with Anthony's unmistakeable self-harmonising singing style. (i'm sure i've seen him explain the seemingly unusual mix of styles by saying it's like having two kids and loving them both equally, but i've forgotten where i saw this.)

Anyway, if "Xr World" is anything to go by, Human Hallucinogen seems like it's going to be great. An inscrutably beshaded Xrin drops rhymes to camera over a claustrophobic beat as slow and heavy as a hijacked steamroller. The accompanying p.Wrecks-edited video has unsettling images of desert skulls, cockfights, grainy porn slivers, crosses, sinister clowns and vomiting, which i think you'll agree is all you really need from a music video.

Song of the day: #32 Michael Bell-Smith – "Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously"

Can't remember if i've ever blogged this before, but it's one of those things i cannot get enough of, and have to share on Facebook, etc., with a regularity which has got to be pretty annoying for the people that i'm friends with.




Brooklyn-based video artist and semiotician Michael Bell-Smith took advantage of the fact that each installment of celebrity micturator R. Kelly's bizarre R'n'B opera uses the same beat and mixed down all the extant episodes (at the time, there were twelve) into one hyperdense, abstract expressionist, over-Kellied morass.

For me the best bit is at 2:45, when the heavy snare drops and suddenly you have 12 incredibly animated R. Kellys all screaming at each other.

Song of the day: #30 Pete Seeger & the Weavers – "Solidarity Forever"

Song of the Day #30 is for #j30. Good luck and solidarity to all strikers and protesters today.

Song of the day: #29 Aurist – "Dekindling"

The first artist to get two Song of the Day posts was also the subject of the very first Song of the Day post with his remix of Shawnna's "RPM". He is, of course, Aurist, and this time the track is "Dekindling", the lead track from his newest album Not Here, which if you were reading yesterday, you'll know was put out by Amoebic Industries Unltd. (basically the corresponding label to this blog).


Anyway, here's the first video from Not Here, for the lead track "Dekindling", as created by one Cory Stephens (http://twitter.com/outmouth), and i really like it. The visuals mostly consist of old amusement park footage (primarily a three-bend water slide, teacup and flying boat/spaceship¹ ride) which, estimating from the film stock and the clothing styles of the people in it, i'd say probably dates from somewhere in the mid '60s–mid '70s period, tho i could just as well be completely wrong about that.² At the same time, the footage flickers and distorts in time with "Dekindling"'s pounding pulse, creating image warps that are equally gorgeous and eerie.

The whole thing also seems to tap into a weird not-nostalgia – can it be nostalgia if you weren't actually there? – that i suspect a lot of us have for those periods of history immediately before we were born or became aware of the world, a time that seems just slightly out of reach. It reminds me of being six and at Disney World, but also a childhood trip to Granada Studios to see one of those films where the seats rock you around in sync with the cinema screen (i think it was some riff on the recently-released Honey I Shrunk the Kids) where the film actually melted and strange molten plastic globules butterflied across the screen and they had to call the whole thing off and halt the bucking rows of seats and bring up the house lights and offer us all refunds, as well as – somehow – most of late 20th-century America.³ Needless to say, this all also works brilliantly as an accompaniment to the track.

This seemingly incredible ability to stimulate weird associations within my psyche that i didn't even realise i had is all the more remarkable when you consider that this is only Cory's third music video.⁴ Definitely going to be checking for his future work.

¹ What do you even call this ride? i'm pretty much just guessing.
² Not being by any means an expert in either film stock or fashion. There's something of the Mad Men era about it, tho.
³ Also the early work of Scottish post-rock group Mogwai, tho why this would be i have no explanation at all.
⁴ Though he does shoot and edit footage for an arts/entertainment web show for his local news.

An adjective could hurt if it's not caught

Oh, here's another thing i apparently forgot to post.¹ My bros in SCAMS were on the NME site recently with the video for their new song "Lost for Words" (which is out today via loads of places like Amazon, etc.), which is nice.² i can't embed the video unfortunately because it seems to be some sort of NME exclusive, so you'd have to click the words "the NME site" above to see it. i'm always getting gazumped by those bastards!

As you'd expect, my involvement with this video was once again totally essential; in this instance, i wrote out some of those brown parcel tags you see attached to everything³ and attached them to tree branches and stuff, hid in a bush to help throw a load of shredded paperbacks over Sasha ("The Girl") for the scene at e.g. 03:15, and scared the piss out of a bunch of curious forestgoers by wandering silently among them in the dark and then suddenly turning on a powerful flashlight.

¹ Tho i did post the unofficial video as a Song of the Day back last May.
² FYI "Making Maps from Memory" is also a really sweet song, as in "touching" or "poignant" rather than in the least funny scene in cinema history, aka that-bit-in-Dude Where's My Car?, sense.
³ My handwriting's the stuff in all-caps with crosses over the 'i's (e.g. "MIC" at 0:37, "SHIRT" at 03:13).

Song of the day: #27 Invincible – "Sledgehammer"

This is that proverbial "real shit" we're always hearing about.

Here, across two packed, intricate verses, Detroit native Invincible shouts out everyone from dead homies Dilla and D12's Proof to "Strange Fruit" writer Abel Meeropol and murdered Black Panther deputy chair Fred Hampton, paraphrases a Frantz Fanon line, and claims to actually be Peter Gabriel at least a year or two before Lil B was running the "women want to sleep with me because i look like [prominent, unlikely public figure]" meme squarely into the ground.





Sorry if everybody else already knows about Invincible (who i really should have heard of before now; tho i suspect most people probably don't), and thanks to Dan Sonorous/Omnific Beats from 30KB for putting me onto her.

Song of the day: #20 Rita Pavone – "My Name Is Potato"

Love this song. Love it.

The video's been posted up around the internets a few times, but usually in the context of animation fanboys on some "hey, this song is shitty, but look at the amazing video by animation pioneer Guido Manuli!" tip. Well they're wrong, all wrong. The video is of incidental interest, and mainly cuz of how adorable Rita Pavone is serenading an imaginary potato, rather than the decent but rather standard animation, in which the potato dances around a bit, tunnels into and out of the ground, fires off a pair of six-shooters, swallows a shovelful of dirt for no apparent reason, and then repeats the whole thing for a second time before zooming off in a rocket. Better are the psychedelic flying 3D letters – "Potato", of course – and Rita's completely un-self-conscious and wonderful dancing at 2:18.

Really, the charm of this 1977 novelty not-quite-hit is increased by how unlikely it is to even exist. i have no idea why someone thought it would be a good idea to write a song about being (named after) a vegetable, but the fact that they did is somehow very encouraging. Probably the best thing about it is how much joy and passion Rita puts into singing such an obviously ridiculous piece. She attacks it as if her life depends on it, and by the time the stunt key change kicks in at 3:00, she sounds like she might actually explode with excitement.

mp3: Rita Pavone – "My Name Is Potato"

Delusionists – "Digital Connects" video

This one was a song-of-the-day last month, and now Delusionists have only gone and made a video for it! i also have a complete set of lyrics so you can peep the sheer amount of smart blog/website references in them while Ben, DBF and Slim Pickens guide you around the track in moody/arty black'n'white.

This rap shit Beats Laying About, so I had to take a minute dedicated a shout,
To every Hip Hop Connection Digital direction providers
Who act like a Sensei and guide us.
Through these Hip Hop Chronicles of Riddick like Vin Diesel
U-Music buffs must have been puffing them Cocaine Blunts (just a quick toke),
Hip Hop Isn’t Dead, nah it just eloped to the Big Smoke.
Believe the Hip Hop Hype Dog,
If you ain’t heard of us you ain’t checking for the right blog.
Oh Word? You never heard the fly chatter
Of a Bonafide nutter on a Certified Banger?
My Style43 times nanger than most,
To redefine The Meaning of Dope rhyme patterns and quotes.
The Underground Strikes Back from the great depression
With Bare Beats in them Basement Sessions.
You might hear one or 2DopeBoyz
No Airs N Graces and prone to make noise
Like “mate what you want!?!” Stay Blatantly Blunt
Pushing UKHH straight to the front (that’s us!).
Repping UK All Day,
Be careful ‘cause Life Just Bounces away
When you play with Vocal Swords that slaughter chumps,
Better Wake Your Daughter Up, if that bitch is sleeping.
Had to switch to a Different Kitchen,
‘Cause the raw Unkut left the kitchen reeking.
With something different to these drug-obsessed amateurs
And only push dope via Suspect Packages.
(Yeah) And the beat plays on
And we don’t stop rocking ‘til the DJ Gone (gone).
God willing we can make Top Billin’ Above Ground
Without dumbing down to a club sound.
Strictly Independant, my brothers and me
And you can hit the button marked RWD
And you’ll agree that it’s wack, Nah Right, shit’s Fat
Lace lyrics with links just to give love back
To all the digital connects.

Oh, and not only that, but should you fancy copping the album after hearing this (totally worth it i'd say), you can get 25% off the download of our album by using the code DIGIFAM at http://music.delusionists.co.uk.

Song of the day: #11 Scams – "Lost for Words"

My pals in Scams have a new album coming soon with a load of new songs and suchlike. This one comes with one of the ace found-media videos the group have done so well in the past, where the themes of vocabulary and the limits of expression are reflected solely through edited clips from the educational literacy/numeracy cartoons that used to turn up in Sesame Street. It's PBS-tastic.

"Lost for Words" and another new one, "Helicopter Parents", can also be heard at the band's Facebook and Myspace pages as of now.

Out From Animals w/30KB — "Skeletons" video

Out From Animals — "Skeletons (demo mix)" feat. 30,000 Bastards

Footage from two old Disney shorts: The Skeleton Dance (August 29, 1929, the very first Silly Symphony) and The Haunted House (December 2, 1929); and from Fleischer's Betty Boop vehicle Minnie the Moocher, which also features the earliest-known footage of Cab Calloway and his orchestra. Edited by Action Andy.

Today's post brought to you by "my company has blocked access to YouTube but, unfortunately for them, have also forgotten to look up what a proxy server is".