sublime detournement of samples from pop songs

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blissblogger

Well-known member

Orca isolate a gorgeous bit of singing from Beverley Craven's #3 hit, amputating it from the sappy chorus

Splicing lines from the second verse ("You look like you're in another world/But I can read your mind") into lines from the first verse ("It's four o' clock in the morning/And it starting to get light") they create a completely different meaning and feeling


I wonder if Bev ever heard it?

(Alongside the drummer in Tubeway Army, the only pop star to come from my hometown)
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member

Tasmin Archer's endearingly earnest #1 hit about the space race as Humankind's premature folly, an Icarian quest beyond our proper sphere, has been sampled by a bunch of dance producers and I'm never quite sure which is the version I heard on the pirates

This below sounds closest but I'd swear there's another one that used the high-and-comedown applicable samples - "did we fly to the moon too soon", "in the rush" , "have we peaked too soon", "greatest adventure", "I blame you for the moonlight sky/and the dream that died", etc etc - more artfully.


Here's Wishdokta's take, some ways into the song - "did we fly to the moon too soon / in the rush"


Blow me here's Orca again, with a moon mission themed tune (but not using Tasmin's song )

 
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blissblogger

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I'm going with the rave examples because I love the lovesong into drugsong switch - but there's probably as many in hip hop and quite a few in dance genres that aren't hardcore / darkside / jungle

Gabber has a bunch e.g. redeployments of Cutting Crews "I Just Died In Your Arms" - i wouldn't describe that one as "sublime" but it is certainly a saucy bit of pillhead nihilism
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
does this count as pop?


Baby D - Let Me Your Fantasy

or even detournment when it is incorporated into this dubplate?

DJ EASY D - I'll Fill Your World With XTC ( dubplate )

first minute or so of this all time classic rave clip:


Doncaster Warehouse 1992

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nice & easy
 
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blissblogger

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thirdform said:
thread title is a contradiction though surely. Detournment is anti-sublime.
Click to expand...

well, redeployment is what I really mean - using it against its original meaning - in a way that the original singer or songwriter might not approve of, i.e. hymning drug states.
 
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blissblogger

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This is one where the detournement (or whatever you want to call it )is not apparent right there on the surface (as it is with the Bev Craven and Tasmin Archer ones, or the George Michael one, or say, darkside tunes using things like Don Maclean's "this'll be the day that I died" or Simon & Garfunkel's "hello darkness). With "Destiny", It's not that well known a source and it's so disguised and processed that you might not recognise the singer at all (heard at the right speed, she is well known and distinctive). But once you do find out where it's from - shivers!


"another sleepless night" is one of the main detourned bits, but it sounds like another bit of the performance is mangled to form the "Destiny" hook - possibly played backwards? - and there's a third bit of wordless vocal that I think is also fashioned out of Tracy Chapman vocables

as a flip of moods, I can't think many more drastic than that
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
Another ooh-gosh moment for me as fan of the original song



"wait a minute baby, stay with me a while / said you'd give me light / but you never told me about the fire"

i.e. the pills are too strong, sit with me a bit

elemental intertextuality - light / fire, but elsewhere in the Stevie Nicks song there's the motif of drowning in the sea of love - that in turn links to "Drowning in Her" by 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
 
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