"Hey Sneak-Thief - you have a new haircut and you look different!"
*groan*
I have a razor and get bored sitting at home all the time - ergo, I do
it to entertain myself. ( Amount money I've spent on haircuts in the
past 15 years: ...$0 ).
Now fuck off and ask me about something else :P
Like why I'm called Sneak-Thief. That's an easy one - I used to be a
clepto until I was 16. Now I just steal drum sounds from all sorts of
ridiculous places that no one would suspect (or care about lol). That's the "sneak" part.
For example:
- Hustler's Ride has drums from the Knight Rider theme song
- Aren't those some Barry White drums in Once Bitten?
- Aurient X'Press has some deftly stolen drums from KC's Boogie Man
- Arrakis Rising has a buried melody that sounds like I Was Made For Lovin' You HAHA
- Speaking of Dune, All Let Go has some drum sounds from the original Dune videogame (respect!)
- Love & Modulation has Nile Rodgers' voice from a BBC interview :D
I even ripped myself off once! I made 4 different versions of a
Polygamy Boys remix for San Serac and was told the last version was
going to be used.But I liked some parts of the first mix so much that I turned it into My Sullen Mistress (which also bites a
Toney Lee
track). Boy was I shocked when the first version of the PB remix got
used instead... I had some 'splaining to do about that one LOL.
However, in retrospect I'm a bit reticent about having used the drums
from Fockewulf 190 - Gitano for Polygamy Boys - Minus Man. It was a lot
more obscure back in 2002 when DJ Gitano suggested we use it.
I almost always avoid sampling melodies and basslines... my fetish lies
primarily in the drum domain. Please direct all whining about sampling
here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis
*** The law does not concern itself with trifles ***
I have always been gladly willing to go to court and defend these
production practices (read:
Hommage) in the context of fair use laws with respect to
creative and original artistic endeavours.
It really makes sense that fair use is legally allowed in cases "which
do not conflict with a
normal exploitation of the work and do
not
unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right
holder." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balancing_test)
In any case, sampling is just another colour in the wide palette of
musicality. My feeling is that there's nothing truly new as we're all
standing on the shoulders of giants.
Brion Gysin sums up my feelings on this in a surrealist but succinct manner:
"Language is an abominable misunderstanding which makes up a part
of matter. The painters and the physicists have treated matter pretty
well. The poets have hardly touched it. In March 1958, when I was
living at the Beat Hotel, I proposed to Burroughs to at least make
available to literature the means that painters have been using for
fifty years. Cut words into pieces and scramble them. You'll hear
someone draw a bow-string. Who runs may read, To read better, practice
your running. Speed is entirely up to us, since machines have delivered
us from the horse. Henceforth the question is to deliver us from that
other so-called superior animal, man. It's not worth it to chase out
the merchants: their temple is dedicated to the unsuitable lie of the
value of the Unique. The crime of separation gave birth to the idea of
the Unique which would not be separate. In painting, matter has seen
everything: from sand to stuffed goats. Disfigured more and more, the
image has been geometrically multiplied to a dizzying degree. A snow of
advertising could fall from the sky, and only collector babies and the
chimpanzees who make abstract paintings would bother to pick one up."
PS> Don't bother posting random spam on my Comments... one quick look and you'll notice I never approve it. Myspace may be an ugly ghetto, but I try to keep my sordid corner here just a lil' bit respectable.