It is so tempting to spend hours analysing the many many influences on El Guincho’s music. There’s clearly everything and the kitchen sink in there - Latin, Tango, Tribal, traditional Spanish singing styles, African Beats, BBC-derived voices and sound effects and much more. And I mean literally in there because he’s not just influenced by all these styles and genres, he builds his music from sample after sample of the stuff.  

But this would be to completely miss the point.

El Guincho’s music may well be at least partly created from other people’s, but it sounds like it’s from a different world.

more

So here’s another unlikely collaboration. Von Südenfed is Mouse On Mars on instruments joined by one of the greatest living Englishman, Mark E. Smith leader of The Fall, on vocals.

Unlikely because Mouse On Mars are a duo from Düsseldorf whose trademark is sophisticated, well polished, often minimalist, left field electronica. Mark E. Smith meanwhile comes from Salford, sings or talks or shouts like a drunken Mancunian ranting in a bar and is…er…never even remotely polished. At all.

But on ‘Flooded’ these very same contrasts seem to have been the catalyst for a piece of music that has more life and originality in it than either acts were producing on anything like a regular basis immediately before the collaboration. And it’s one of the most infectious and funky pieces of music of the last five years.

more

Five minutes of sublime music. Five minutes that tells the story of one very important chapter in recent musical history.

What we have here is a 3 or 4 second sample of a very well known song used to create a completely new piece of music. There is some drum machining in there too (created by The Field) but it’s primarily the sample from the original song played over and over again through various pieces of effects technology.   

Yet it sounds stunningly original and precisely of this minute rather than 1984 when the original song was released. It’s a very creative piece of work yet the creativity does not come from the song writing or the musicianship, and it’s certainly not from the words or their meaning as they’ve been left out entirely. The creativity is in the sampling and editing and remixing. What started as Dub experimentation in Jamaica in the late ’60′s with Mixing Desk as musical instrument and Producer as creator (see ABON 0014) has evolved into this.

The debate about the merits and creative morality of this post modern form of creating music versus more traditional song writing and performing is over (surely!). In the light of the sheer beauty, emotion and creativity of much post modern music it has become an academic debate. A more interesting topic for discussion is why the sampling of this particular bit of that song in precisely this way results in a sublime piece of music.

more