quoted 3 lines i think you'll agree sampling richard pryor for instance is a> i think you'll agree sampling richard pryor for instance is a
> lot funnier
> and authentic than saying whatever it is he said yourself.
Well, of course, Richard Pryor uttering a practically unintelligible rhyme
is one thing, what with it having a certain timbre, texture, timing, and
feel that is inimitably his own. But the "ring modulator" thing struck me on
a lyrical and conceptual level, not so much on a textural level. Including
words and lessons about electronic music in an elevctronic music peice to me
is quite interesting.
But in the immortal words of Tonya Headon:
"Yes kids, any blunted moron with a sampler can now become an musical
icon! The idea that someone would purposely take the
do-it-yourself-even-if-you-have-no-talent aesthetic of bad punk music and
combine it with the worst idea in hip-hop (namely that the more obscure your
sample is, the better the result) staggers me. The fact that a lot of people
like it is pretty damn typical."
I too am guilty of appreciating samples for their esotericness: when I do
recognize a sample on a track, I usually feel a certain degree of pride in
my own coolness - plus I feel a certain affinity for the artist him/herself.
The flip side of this is when I hear a song for the first time and realize
that it is the sample source for something more familiar to me that I
thought was really really cool, I am usually quite disappointed in the
artist. I remember a two week period where I heard just about half of the
basic ingredients that went into Amon Tobin's bricolage as a coworker was
blasting his be-bop records. To realize that a song that I really liked,
from the whole timbre to the drum solo to the horn riffs is simply a
cobbling together of samples from two not-at-all-obscure Charlie Parker
records is a terrible disappointment.
That said, when the sample comes from that certain middle strata of
esotericness, that is, from such sources as high-middlebrow movies like Repo
Man or the Matrix (fine films, but hardly esoteric), I cringe even more.
Especially when the sample has intelligible words in it. Vibert/Plug's
Barton Fink sample is sufficiently ironic to not make me puke, but it's damn
close to being cheesy.
I know most IDMers don't like songs with words, but for me if a sample has
words in it, the artist is using those words to say something that I want to
pay attention to. In the "ring modulator" case, his statement could have
been more interesting had he been open to the idea of actually using a
microphone and saying some ideas. This probably never ocurred to him (hell,
he may not even have a microphone in his studio!) and I'm afraid that the
reason why it didn't occur to him because his idiom (electronic music, trip
hop, drum-n-bass) doesn't usually include words. Which is why I have some
real respect for Bodgan Raczynski for using his own voice to say things
instead of using samples ro repeat other peoples words.
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