Over the last couple of years, I’ve been using proper professional equipment to make music. It’s certainly more reliable, but recently, I decided to regress and try out some music using some really crappy gear. Toy instruments. I’ve acquired a fair bit over the years through boot sales and charity shops, not to mention my own kids’ toys. I expanded the selection to include instruments made for children – not necessarily toys – such as recorders or glockenspiels.
So far, I’ve completed two tracks. The first, which I will probably make available another time, uses quite a lot of my son Albert’s Power Rangers toys, for noises and voices. The second, which I present here, uses recorders, glockenspiel, toy saxophone, my old faithful Casio MT45 (which I’ve had since I was 13) and a few cheapo keyboards, which I’ve modified to sound like they’re dying. The only grown-up instrument is a bass guitar, because toy instruments are not generally known for their low end.
The video naturally features kids playing musical instruments…
You may well have seen the very amusing 4play interview with Raygun – the kind of traditional glam-rock-with-wooshy-synths band middle-class A&R men loved to sign in the 90s (see also: Gay Dad).
I won’t post the original here as it’s not hard to find, but the singer’s jaw-dropping pretensions and naiveity will propell them to at least at week’s worth of fame.
So, in a bid to further prick their pomposity, I made a few changes to the footage…
The first in an occasional series. The Dragons are left speechless by a virtuoso performance of a Dusty Springfield song. Unfortunately, no one is willing to break the ensuing silence…
I made this aaaages ago, but only just got round to doing a video which I’m rather pleased with. Someone did a remix of this which big-beated it up, but I prefer mine (I would though I suppose) – it’s a bit more concise and poppy.
I decided to do a one-nighter bootleg. These things are generally the product of serendipity rather than design and an acapella I had hanging around (”I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross) just happened to work rather nicely with a track I’ve been enjoying recently (”Frenchy’s” by Holy Fuck). A little bit of shuffling around with the acapella and bingo!
The video is an experiment in editing by me. Expect more soon.
What a fucking great band Killdozer were. Formed in 1983, blah blah – read their Wikipedia entry if you want more biographical information. They sounded like some kind of demented cross between The Melvins and Cookie Monster and were ace, which is all you really need to know.
For your aural delight then, two things: the first from their Little Baby Buntin LP, is “Hi There” – an um…interesting conversation between two aquaintances set to music. The second is their cover version of Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” from their later period. The video is simply the Janet Jackson original with the Killdozer version synched beautifully.
Years ago, I cobbled together a ramshackle remix of the pinball count song from Sesame Street. It was the only Braces Tower track to have been graced with a video – albeit a slightly dodgy mashup between the original number count and Yellow Submarine. Still seems to be popular after all this time…
