Enjoying this music is against the law

Filed under: Diversions — olivander January 5, 2010 @ 12:25 pm

I need to take a moment out of working on the next installment of Amelia & Me, the 2009 Typewriter Roundup, the 2010 MoLG calendar (I’ll bet you didn’t think I was going to do one, did you?), and legitimate work to tell you something very important:

The new Kleptones album is finally out!

For the uninitiated, The Kleptones is Eric Kleptone, a British DJ who likes to mash together all manner of musical styles to create Something Completely Different. A listen to one of his albums is a trip through his entire musical education, without regard to genre (who would have thought that Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” vocals would have overlaid perfectly with Rage Against the Machine’s “Down on the Street” backtrack?) or obscurity (did you know that Harry Nilsson recorded a cover of “Sixteen Tons” back in 1964 just so it could be mixed with Sister Surround’s “The Soundtrack of Our Lives” 30 years later? Me, either.)

Naturally, the recording industry considers Kleptone’s work to be in violation of copyright and illegal to possess.

Midnight, Jan 1 saw the long-awaited release of “Uptime / Downtime“, the duo’s first album of original material since 2006’s “24 Hours“. As the title suggests, disk 1 is all upbeat, fast-moving, sometimes aggressive tracks; disk 2 is a slower wind-down set. I wish I had had Uptime to play at my New Year’s Eve party (heck, I wish I’d had a New Year’s Eve party), and Downtime for the day-after recovery. “Uptime” is a little heavy on the Beastie Boys samples to me, but that didn’t diminish my overall enjoyment of the side.

Here’s an example of some of the things you can expect to find buried within each track. This is a list of samples used in just the “Uptime” track “Come Again”:

  • The Beatles – “Come Together”
  • Beastie Boys – “No Sleep till Brooklyn”
  • Daft Punk – “Robot Rock”
  • Rare Earth – “I Just Want to Celebrate”
  • Queen & David Bowie – “Under Pressure”
  • Cypress Hill – “Insane in the Brain”
  • John Lennon – “Power to the People”
  • Boston – “More Than a Feeling”
  • M|A|R|R|S – “Pump Up the Volume”
  • Freeez – “I.O.U”
  • Art of Noise – “Close (to the Edit)”
  • S’Express – “Theme from S’Express”

“Downtime” finds things like Nick Drake merged with Star Trek’s computer (Majel Barrett) and Marianne Faithfull collaborating with the late Paul Newman.

And somehow it all works.

“Uptime / Downtime” is not for everyone. If your musical tastes lean more toward Tobey Keith or Jimmy Buffet, this album is probably not for you. But if you’re looking for an alternative to the packaged synthpop that fills the airwaves today, The Kleptones may just be the aural antidote you’re looking for.