Mixtape 272 • Version Control 4
The fourth aggregation of musical replicas and facsimiles!
The fourth aggregation of musical replicas and facsimiles!
I’ve done a couple dozen all-covers shows already, usually during fundraising, but for some reason have never come up with a name for them. It must have been because the painfully obvious Version Control hadn’t occurred to me yet, a real embarrassing confession given my day job in the realm of code. At any rate, it is here, and we are going to be versioning them semantically starting now.
The three-piece punchy pop formula should be familiar to everyone by now, but the sounds of Bad Bad Hats are an elegant proof of their own.
For a quarter century, Deerhoof have been a benchmark for the contrasting dynamics of sweet and sour, spiked and pillowy, and all manner of sounds that should not get along but quite obviously do.
Uwe Schmidt has had an extensive career, recording under many names as electronic musicians do, but it's his work as Señor Coconut (and now as Atom™), where he deconstructs familiar songs into something Kraftwerk would play if hired to play a quinceañera, that brings me this very particular weird glee.
The original “Crimson and Clover” was Tommy James and the Shondells' biggest hit, but it was also one of the first songs to be recorded on 16 track equipment, and is a textbook example on the use (or overuse) of rhythmic tremolo. Pom Pom Squad does a good job of channeling the song's sweet yet feral vibe.