June 17th, 2005 4:08pm
Close Your Eyes And Count To TenFeist "Inside &...
Close Your Eyes And Count To Ten
Feist "Inside & Out (Ewan Pearson & Al Usher Dub)" - I wonder if the Beegees had to get a royalty for this track. It's ostensibly a remix of Feist covering one of their songs, but Pearson and Usher's final product seems to have no relationship with that recording whatsoever, unless I'm missing some subtle little thing only a trained musician or musicologist could pick up on. Pearson and Usher do some amazing things with the vocal samples in this track, implying an incredible amount of emotional detail from otherwise unintelligible vocal fragments. It's all hopeful anticipation and subtle sexuality, and it feels like someone's interior world expanding outward into reality. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)
Crossover "Apples On A Stick" - The lyrics of this track come off like a string of silly inside jokes, but even the most ridiculous lines seem sexy and compelling to me. [Err, as it turns out these are traditional jump rope rhymes...] Maybe it's the bass and the beats. It could be the aura of mystery. It's probably just because I'm a sucker for this girl's voice every single time. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)
Feist "Inside & Out (Ewan Pearson & Al Usher Dub)" - I wonder if the Beegees had to get a royalty for this track. It's ostensibly a remix of Feist covering one of their songs, but Pearson and Usher's final product seems to have no relationship with that recording whatsoever, unless I'm missing some subtle little thing only a trained musician or musicologist could pick up on. Pearson and Usher do some amazing things with the vocal samples in this track, implying an incredible amount of emotional detail from otherwise unintelligible vocal fragments. It's all hopeful anticipation and subtle sexuality, and it feels like someone's interior world expanding outward into reality. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)
Crossover "Apples On A Stick" - The lyrics of this track come off like a string of silly inside jokes, but even the most ridiculous lines seem sexy and compelling to me. [Err, as it turns out these are traditional jump rope rhymes...] Maybe it's the bass and the beats. It could be the aura of mystery. It's probably just because I'm a sucker for this girl's voice every single time. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)
6/17/05 6:39 pm
you might not have spent a whole lot of time jumping rope as a kid but the lyrics of “Apples on a Stick” are all traditional rope-jumping chants [which I amazingly remember even though I haven't sung them in 25+ years]
6/17/05 6:48 pm
No, I most certainly did not! Thanks for pointing that out. Now my post seems a little foolish, but oh well.
6/17/05 7:02 pm
It’s okay, we like to retain our mystery [but you can find plenty of collections of rhymes online if you want to read more, a lot of them are pretty dirty ;]
6/17/05 7:59 pm
Okay, this is, um, interesting. Is there anything left other than the vocal samples and maybe a bit of the chord progression? A bit odd after recently seeing Feist perform a very “naturalistic” set with just herself and a guitar.
6/17/05 11:51 pm
bellissimo intervento
6/18/05 12:35 am
crossover track sounds like a spalding rockwell track
6/18/05 4:14 am
both great tracks… thanks
6/18/05 11:32 am
The Pearson and Usher-Remix is really great! Thanks for posting this.
6/18/05 6:39 pm
That Feist song is awesome… one of my favourite covers on Let it Die which was probably my favourite album of the year.
6/18/05 7:25 pm
That Feist remix is why I hate remixes sometimes….it’s hardly recognizable from the original. I think a good remix needs to preserve the vocals as much as possible. That remix stinks. It’s good as a dance song by it self. But I’d prefer to just listen to the original.
6/18/05 9:15 pm
Mike, part of what I was getting at in the entry is that this really shouldn’t be thought of as a remix at all - it’s an entirely separate entity from the Feist recording, and really should be engaged with on its own merits. My feeling is that a lot of the time people like Feist commission remixes like this because they want to give work or get new music from artists they like, and the notion of the “remix” is just a pretense necessary to get that done.