MF Doom and Clams Casino

Here the lazily delivered drawl-raps of MF Doom are paired up with a great example of how Clams Casino uses vocals in his production. Unlike most other producers CC uses the voice as an utter material, a vocal putty to be molded, stretched and twisted. Rather than traditional pop clipped 'samples' of the voice that require framing, CC builds a soundscape from voices. Pretty much all of CC's tracks do this, and some examples are quite overt - but others are quite subtle, the more I listen to a Clams Casino track the more I notice that the sounds are voices - either wailing, croaking or or breathing. His production on Counting (the Robb Bank$ track) is an example of this, synthy soundscapes are actually a cacophony of re-pitched and chrono-dragged wails. Waterfalls (from Clams' Rainforest EP) is a great example of how the grain of the voice is quite resistant to burying, despite being re-pitched, tuned down and smothered in reverb the voiciness of the sound prevails. Natural (from the same EP) shows the same resistance of the grain but against a glitching and jittering digitalisation of the voice. I find it interesting how, despite the sonic of the voice being morphed and degraded out of any semblance to the original, there is still a corporeal grain, still a unique vocality about it. In all of Clams' trax the voice is never quite converted into a chromium synth, wooden timbre or metallic chime but always remains in some sense, regardless of the degrees of sonic manipulation, a very fleshy and erotic voice.

The Mimic

Came across The Mimic in More4 today. Looks to be worth a second watch. Lots of use of the mimicked/disguised voice in identity play - especially in relation the contexts of anxiety and insecurity.... Made me think of Freya Jarman-Ivens essay and talk. Is mimicking (successfully, e.i in situations where the audience does not know one is a mimic - first time encounters, acousmatix etc) running along the same lines as lip-synching identity playing?

Pontone - I Hear Voices mix

I Hear Voices Mix - amazing. Perhaps the best opening voice ever. Even more uncomfortable than the baby cry vocoder on Hype Williams' Rescue Dawn...

Dave Tompkins 50 Best Vocoder Records

The 50 Greatest Vocoder Songs

Young Smoke - Space Zone

Heir to Drexciya.....? This album is so so More Brilliant then the Sun material..... As well as fragmented dislocated android voices check how ("malign gremlins perverse voco-imps and the metallically dredged VaderVoder..... hyperbabble to ultraslow" - text remixed),..... rather than an eckoplex distorting space and time, space and time are dissolved and folded into one another through an erratic and dizzying disrhythmia... syncopation discombobulation. ("you can't catch the beat, the tails of sound as they turn round a corner, disappear down a corridor (...) where rhythm should be there is space, and vice versa. (...) pivots around an absent beat (...) Every track ambushes you, confound the process of pattern recognition by leaving the unexpected beat implied" K.E. - p.64)

Also-  check out psycho war - track 23 on Bangs and Works http://www.planet.mu/discography/ziq310

Timestretched Vocals

Splash - Babylon - Thanks Mark


A nice remix - If I heard that bark in a club I would have a nervous breakdown - in body and mind.



...and one of my favourite old Warp Records tracks - Chris Clark, Gob Coitus (the LP version has more..... much much more metallic grained timestretch in it - but for some reason both the Richard Fenwick and Lynn Fox videos use edited versions with a more click-hoppy choppy ending rather than the dragged out ableton death-rattle on the original - which is amazing - can't find the LP version online though)

Android Phonix

Some vocoder videos to go with the last two essays

Susan McClary, "This is not a Story My People Tell: Musical Time and Space According to Laurie Anderson"

Kodwo Eshun, "Inner Spatializing the Song" and "Programming Rhythmatic Frequencies" from More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction




"Zapp is the menschmachine gone gooey (...) android doowop (...) fleshless rigidity converges with the spineless electroid of Zapp" -  K. Eshun


^^^... tagging on from Beyonce post vvv