Category: Soundproof

This, despite the fact that the latest Rolling Stone rehashes the EMI-versus-artistic freedom issue yet again. That’s roughly three consecutive issues of America’s most revered rock, er, lad, er, rock magazine that have documented DJ Danger Mouse’s travails of late (isn’t there some expression about “beating a dead mouse” or somesuch cliche?).
Nope, this particular post is for those obsessive souls who took their LPs of the Beatles’ White Album and played John Lennon’s incoherent utterances backwards, until they were able to discern that Paul was, in fact, dead.
Get out your copy of Danger Mouse’s Grey Album or, if you downloaded it, work with the MP3 files directly. Acquire a freeware audio editor. Take the eleventh track, “Interlude,” and reverse it. Sit back and pray as you listen to the track which follows, whose lyrics we’ve helpfully transcribed for you:

“6…6…6…Murder, murder Jesus…6…6…6…
Leave ni**as on death’s door.
Murder, murder Jesus…6…6…6.”

Of course, we all know that “asterisk” sounds awfully garbled when spoken either forward or in reverse, so you may want to substitute those asterisks mentioned above for the letter G. Just a su**estion.

From MTV.com:

“A representative for EMI Records served the cease-and-desist orders to Danger Mouse and stores such as Fat Beats and hiphopsite.com. EMI Records controls the sound recordings for the Beatles on behalf of Capitol Records Inc. The publishing side of the Beatles’ catalog is owned by Sony Music/ ATV Publishing, a venture between Sony Music and Michael Jackson.

(Earlier thoughts on The Grey Album…)

When not busy geeking out to Pitchfork‘s coverage of all things indietronic, we’re likely debating whether it was Hood or the Notwist who first inspired Radiohead’s post-rock reinvention in 1999. Or maybe it’s something along the lines of whether or not Basic Channel‘s music deserves a genre classification of its own, or the merits of declaring Philip Jeck as the ultimate electro-acoustic composer, or pronouncing L.A.’s Stones Throw to be the most underrated hip-hop label in operation today.
In other words, it’s unlikely that we’d ever get behind a major-label record of any stripe. But here’s some major-label-styled hype for you: it’s only the second week of February, and already the leading contender for 2004’s album of the year has been released. Available today on the racks of all sorts of record stores across the country, in outlets as diverse as Kim’s and Amoeba to FYE and Sam Goody (and likely to sell just as well in each type of these aforementioned shops), Kanye West’s College Dropout has been released on Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella imprint, home to such musical all-stars as Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek, and, ummm, Samantha Ronson.
This would be considered “staying in the family”, since the 26-year-old West is heretofore best known as the producer of some of Jay-Z’s biggest hits off of 2001’s The Blueprint. Relatively invisible up to this point, he’s also spent the past two years becoming one of pop music’s most likely hit-makers, engineering the hooks and beats for a remix of Britney Spears’ collaboration with Madonna, Ludacris‘ “Stand Up” and Alicia Keys‘ “You Don’t Know My Name”, as well as the definitive summer anthem for 2003, Talib Kweli‘s “Get By”, which I most recently heard played out at a New Year’s Eve party thrown by members of Silverlake’s indie-guitar-and-electronics scenesters.
That means crossover appeal.